ATHENS – A 30-year-old Georgian man was taken into custody after he went before an investigative magistrate where he denied the brutal robbery of an elderly couple in their home or having anything to do with a home invasion in which a young mother was suffocated to death.

He was caught trying to leave Greece at the Bulgarian border with a forged passport as a manhunt was under way for three men who broke into the home Caroline Crouch, 20 and her 32-year-old husband, Charalambos Anagnostopoulos, who was tied in another room when she was killed in front of their 11-month-old daughter.

His lawyer said the man, who was not identified, had nothing to with either case but no further details were available, including how the investigation into the murder is proceeding.

The New Democracy government put up a 300,000-euro ($362,496) reward for information that leads to capturing the perpetrators and proposed longer prison times for violent offenders.