“THE Caroline he died after a prolonged and agonizing effort to breathe,” said forensics professor Haido Spiliopoulou, who was at the scene of the horrific crime in May 2021, to the Mixed Court of Appeal. medical examiner ruled out the possibility of the 35-year-old’s claim being true Babis Anagnostopoulou that the 20-year-old British woman’s death was caused by a “tight embrace”. Mrs. Spiliopoulou is the one who examined the lifeless body of the 20-year-old and took the “smart” watch she was wearing from her hand, which she handed over to the police. The watch proved to be one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in fully solving the case as it recorded the last five minutes of Caroline struggling for a single breath under the pillow the pilot was pressing over her face.

“Death occurred at approximately 6 minutes after 4 in the morning” testified Mrs. Spiliopoulou who said that “in 3 to 4 minutes the brain starts to collapse”. The medical examiner said that the perpetrator’s wife was probably surprised in her sleep and that’s why she didn’t have time to react, “whereas in a different case the victim would have to struggle for a long time, to react. She would scream, I don’t believe she screamed, the whole neighborhood would hear her,” said the witness. According to the witness, Caroline was so disfigured on the bed that she said she wondered if it was another person. “I immediately concluded that the death was asphyxiation. She was so swollen that she was unrecognizable against the passport. His eyes were bleeding profusely”, pointed out Ms. Spiliopoulou.

President: What exactly does this show?

Witness : Long time suffocation, duration. There were suffocation marks on the face and injuries to the mouth…

President: Was there an attempt to block the mouth?

Witness: I’m sure of it. The cause of death was that the mouth has been obstructed.

As the medical examiner reported, the husband, who had stated that they were confronted by unscrupulous robbers, had minor injuries. “So light she could go to work the next day.”

In her deposition the couple’s neighbor in Glyka Nera, Angeliki Gerolimatou said that she did not hear a fight that night, emphasizing that if the 35-year-old and Caroline had fought, she would have heard them because the insulation was not good. “The only sound I heard at 4.20am was the dog crying and footsteps coming down the stairs. I assumed the animals were fighting,” he said. As the witness mentioned, who recounted what happened on the fateful morning when Anagnostopoulos called her asking for help, she was very impressed by the calmness with which the 35-year-old made statements to journalists after the murder.

Prosecutor: A man who should have been psychologically broken…

Witness: I could not speak.

Prosecutor: Did he have composure and some comfort?

Witness : Megali.

Prosecutor: How was it?

Witness: As if he is talking about a third party, not his wife…

In fact, as the witness testified, the day after she asked the pilot what he was going to do, he replied that he would delay the house they were going to build with Caroline. “I wondered if he’s taken a box of sedatives or if he’s confused… I thought something was wrong… He was very cool, no emotion. He had come home and never talked to me about Caroline … I texted him that ‘Caroline will always be in my heart’ and he never replied.”

Referring to her 20-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Gerolimatou described her as “smiling”, “kind” and a “loving mother”, adding, however, that she had the feeling that she was “scared” and that a few days before the murder, Caroline had confided in her that she was drowning: ” She had been stressed for the last few months, she had neglected herself… She was obviously not happy with her life…’.

According to the witness, “they looked like a happy couple, but in fact there was control from the accused… Caroline was under pressure, she didn’t go to the University”, she said, saying that the 20-year-old usually had money “only in the afternoon” when the 35-year-old was also at home. The witness testified that in her opinion, Caroline was living in “a golden cage”, a phrase she had also said in the first court and was also used by the Prosecutor.