Strangled wife’s diary entries about husband’s alleged abuse blocked by court

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Caroline Crouch reportedly wrote heartbreaking diary entries in code to document the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of her accused-murderer husband — but Greek authorities have banned their publication, arguing that they could prejudice his murder trial.

It is suspected that the diaries contain disturbing details of the 20-year-old British woman’s deteriorating marriage in the run-up to her strangulation killing, the Times of London reported.

Her husband, chopper pilot Babis Anagnostopoulos, 33, on Tuesday gave five hours of testimony after initially telling investigators that his wife was killed when their Glyka Nera home in northeastern Athens was burglarized on May 11.

“I wish I could go back in time,” he reportedly said as he apologized for the killing, which he claimed had not been premeditated, but happened in the heat of an argument.

The pilot had previously admitted he “lost his temper” when Crouch threatened to leave him and take their 11-month-old daughter, Lydia.

Supreme Court prosecutor Vassilis Pliotis issued the urgent order over the diaries, whose passages were leaked to the press and social media.

“The publication of the [diary] entries not only offends the victim’s memory,” Pliotis said, according to the Times, “but they may contribute to creating a favorable climate for the defendant and his line of defense.”

Some of the excerpts describe a tumultuous marriage, which led Crouch to threaten to leave her controlling husband.

In a July 3, 2020, entry, Crouch wrote of her plans to move out of their home in Glyka Nera, northeast of the capital, with their daughter.

“Today my little one is a month old — it’s also the day I told Babi I want to leave… I feel awful,” she wrote, adding that she found a house in Halandri, a suburb of Athens.

She said she had thought of leaving Anagnostopoulos before she got pregnant but eventually “stayed with him because I didn’t want my daughter to grow up without her parents.”

In December 2019, she wrote: “I fought with Babi again. This time it was serious. I hit him, I cursed at him and he broke down the door.

“All I wanted was for him to ask how I am when I woke up. I woke up so weak and tired,” she continued.

“I am thinking of leaving. I am thinking of going to my sister, I don’t know if I can keep going with Babi,” Crouch added. “I love him so much that I can’t leave him even though this relationship hurts me.”

In another entry in 2019, according to the Sun, Crouch wrote: “Last night we fought with Babi because I had a meltdown because of my hormones. I yelled at him and hit him and told him I don’t want our baby…

“I am not well, I am very upset, I know he would never hurt my baby. My love for her is stronger than anything in the world,” she added.

Crouch said she felt “embarrassed” that her hormones affected her so strongly — and blamed them for their quarrels, according to the report.

Pliotis, the prosecutor, called for an urgent probe to determine how the documents — part of a 26-page case file — were leaked to various media.

Anagnostopoulos’ attorney, Alexandros Papaioannidis, said: “He never meant for any of this to happen. This was not something that he had planned. He panicked. And he did what he did to protect his daughter who would be left alone [had he been imprisoned].”

Since her mom was killed, Lydia has been in the care of her father’s parents.

She was not physically harmed, but police found her quietly tapping the shoulder of her dead mother, a sight that brought the team of officers who arrived at the scene to tears, according to the Times.

“It’s not just the brutality of the murder that has stirred passions here,” psychiatrist Sofia Argyriou told the outlet. “It is that an entire nation feels they have been duped and cheated by someone who could not uphold the sanctity of his role as a father.”

Anagnostopoulos is charged with premeditated murder, animal abuse, providing false testimony and filing a false police report about the robbery.

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