One of two lawyers defending 33-year-old murder suspect quits

One of the two lawyers defending the 33-year-old helicopter pilot who confessed last week to the murder of his young wife in the Athens suburb of Glyka Nera in May resigned from the case on Tuesday.

“I no longer want to be involved with the defense of this case, in any respect, for personal reasons,” Vassilis Spyrou said in a public resignation letter hours before the suspect was due to testify to an investigating magistrate. 

Babis Anagnostopoulos’ deposition is due to begin at 10 a.m. and is expected to last several hours as he recounts his version of the events that resulted in the death by asphyxiation of 20-year-old Caroline Crouch on May 11. 

The suspect has already presented several different versions, including his original story to police that Crouch was killed by burglars who had tied Anagnostopoulos up and hung the family dog from a banister. He has since claimed that he killed Crouch while trying to prevent her from hurting herself and their baby girl and staged the scene to look like a burglary gone wrong, while later admitting that he killed the 20-year-old in her sleep because she had threatened to leave him.

It has also also been suggested that Crouch may have threatened Anagnostopoulos with divulging knowledge of certain shady dealings he had been involved in.

Tuesday is also expected to bring a decision on which of the two sets of grandparents are to have custody of the 1-year-old child, who had been placed by Anagnostopoulos near her mother’s dead body when police arrived at the scene of the murder. Spyrou was responsible for the part of the case involving the custody of the child.