A GREEK cop has told how he collapsed when he saw the crying baby daughter of a murdered Brit mum trying to wake her up.
Glyka Nera was first to see Caroline Crouch, 20, after she was brutally tortured and killed by burglars in her home, in an upmarket suburb of Athens.
Officers found Caroline's body tied to a pole and her pilot husband – Charalambos Anagnostopoulos – also bound, reports Pro Thema.
Raiders had strangled her in the attic bedroom at around 5am on Tuesday.
Caroline's daughter Lydia, 11 months, was "half on her, screaming and hitting her mother with her hands to wake her up", cops said/
Officer Nera says he is still in shock from what he saw and that it will haunt him forever, reports Ta Nea.
"I collapsed seeing the little girl sitting on her dead mother," he said.
The cop said it was the most horrific thing he had seen in his 20 years as a serving officer.
Nera said that as he entered the family's home, the dog was hanging on the stairs, while in the attic he found Caroline's husband tied to the floor in bed, with little Lydia on Caroline's back, trying to wake her up.
Charalambos has told investigators he begged for their lives as the brutal thieves held a gun to the baby's head and demanded to know where they kept their cash and jewels.
Speaking to reporters, Charalambos said he discovered his wife had been murdered when police officers removed the tape covering his eyes.
He said: "They tied us up while we told them where the money was.
"I realised that my wife was not alive when the police freed me.
"My daughter, fortunately, was not hit. She went to the hospital as a precaution and, fortunately, she is fine."
Detectives have reportedly drawn up a "red list" of 100 suspects including foreigners and Greek nationals who have recently been freed from jail.
They are also probing possible links to five other robberies last year, which were also characterised by shocking levels of violence.
Officers suspect the gang may have been tipped off that the couple had £13,000 in banknotes stashed in the house.
The money was to pay for builders after they bought a plot of land and was reportedly hidden in a Monopoly box.
Police believe the gang had information on the land sale and believed they would find a large amount of money in the house, Skai.gr reports.
But according to newsit.gr murder cops are looking at whether the information came from within the couple’s inner circle.
A distraught Charalambos told investigators the terrified couple pleaded with the depraved gang not to hurt them and their baby, as his wife screamed for help.
The gang kept torturing her, convinced more money was hidden in the house.
The thieves eventually escaped with more than £30,000 in cash and jewellery.
The three robbers forced their way into the family's two storey house at 4.30am after breaking a CCTV camera and hanging the family's dog by its own leash.
A fourth criminal kept watch outside the home as the other three found the couple sleeping with their child in an attic bedroom.
Caroline's British father moved to Greece 20 years ago where he lives with his Filipina wife, who was said to be in Athens with investigators.
The dream island of Alonissos where Caroline was bought up has been thrown “into huge mourning”, its mayor, Petros Vafinis, exclusively told The Sun.
“We’re a small island, everyone knew Caroline who had been schooled here and she was one of our own," he said.
“She was lovely, a girl scout and brilliant in martial arts. They were the perfect couple, so in love, so happy, but unfortunately fate didn’t smile on them,” he added, saying the pair had first met on the island.
“To think that she is gone, at such a tender age and so unfairly is very hard," he said.
"We are all very shocked, very upset.”
Source: Read Full Article