Anna Podedworna, 40, is accused of using a kitchen knife to cut up the body of mum-of-one Izabela Zablocka before burying her in the garden of the terraced house they shared in Normanton, Derby
Footage shown in court shows the moment a woman is arrested over the death of girlfriend she allegedly ‘cut in two’ and ‘buried in the garden’.
Jurors at Derby Crown Court heard that turkey butcher Anna Podedworna, 40, is accused of using a kitchen knife to cut up the body of mum-of-one Izabela Zablocka before burying her in the garden of the terraced house they shared in Normanton, Derby.
Izabela is said to have died in 2010, though her remains were not discovered until June last year. Derby Crown Court heard that Podedworna contacted the police to tell them they would find her dismembered body in the back garden of the house, where it had remained undisturbed for 15 years.
In a previously unseen video clip, which has been shown to a jury during the trial, Podedworna is seen being handcuffed by officers and read her rights before being led away.
Jurors were told Podedworna was in a sexual relationship with Ms Zablocka when they moved to the UK from Poland and worked in a poultry factory called Cranberry Foods in Scropton, Derbyshire.
Ms Zablocka, 30, stopped contacting her family in August 2010, the court heard. Giving evidence on Tuesday, Podedworna told the jury that Ms Zablocka was “angry” on the day of her death and asked why she had come home late from work.
The defendant alleged her former partner, who would regularly drink alcohol, grabbed her, pressed her up against the wall and strangled her until she found it “difficult” to breathe. Defence barrister Clive Stockwell KC asked Podedworna: “What were you thinking at the time?”
Speaking from the witness box with a Polish interpreter, Podedworna replied: “That she was going to kill me,” adding that she was “terrified”.
Podedworna, who said she tried to push Ms Zablocka away, thought “that was the end… that she would kill me”. The defendant told the court that Ms Zablocka had held her by the neck and threatened to kill her two or three weeks before the fatal injury.
She told the court: “At that time I was scared to be around the house… I was scared of speaking to her because I did not know what was going on.” Speaking about the day Ms Zablocka died, Podedworna told the jury she wanted her “to leave me alone, to let me go”.
Podedworna told the court she tried to grab Ms Zablocka’s neck before she got hold of a figurine of a horse from a window and hit her with it.
She said: “I checked her pulse on the neck. I was trying to resuscitate her.”
Podedworna denied that she wanted to hurt Ms Zablocka. Asked why she did not call the police or an ambulance when she could not find a pulse, the defendant said she had “no witness” and nobody would believe she was defending herself.
She added that she thought she would “go to prison for the rest of my life”. Podedworna said: “I was just terrified, I felt fear. I thought I will bury her. I took the decision I would bury her in the garden.
“I wanted to pick her up whole. I just did not have the strength to pick her up. I had an idea to cut her down. It seemed the only way… to cut her into two.”
The trial previously heard that Podedworna was a skilled butcher whose work involved “skinning, deboning, and portioning out turkey carcasses using a large knife”.
Podedworna put Ms Zablocka, who was a mother of a young daughter at the time, in plastic bin bags and buried her in a hole in the garden, the court heard.
Asked how she felt doing this, the defendant replied: “That I’m some type of a monster.”
Podedworna, of Boyer Street, Derby, told the jury that she argued with Ms Zablocka, often over money or jealousy, and that on one occasion while they were living in Poland, her partner gave her a black eye.
Ms Zablocka’s daughter previously told the court she recalls Podedworna chasing her mother with a knife in Poland, which the defendant denied.
Podedworna denies murder, preventing a lawful burial and perverting the course of justice.
The trial continues.
