A woman on trial accused of murdering her partner told a court she felt ‘like some sort of monster’ after spending two hours cutting her body in half and putting the remains in bin bags.
Anna Podedworna said she decided to dismember Izabela Zablocka after realising she could not move her from the living room where she had hit her with a horse figurine.
In an astonishing exchange with her barrister, Podedworna admitted killing Ms Zablocka, then aged 30, but said she was ‘defending herself’ after her partner tried to strangle her.
She told how after realising Ms Zablocka was dead she ‘went into the garden… looked around, checked if there was a place where I could have done it’.
‘When I located that place …I took a decision I would bury her in the garden,’ she said.
Podedworna, who was aged 24 at the time, said she then removed her partner’s clothes and used a kitchen knife to cut her in half on their living room floor.
After putting her in a wheelie bin she went to bed and work the next day, digging a grave when she got home.
Podedworna, now 40, is on trial accused of murder, preventing a lawful burial and perverting the course of justice, which she denies.
Ms Zablocka’s body was found in June last year buried under hardstanding of the Derby home the two women shared – 15 years after she last had contact with her family.
Izabela Zablocka (pictured) last made contact with her family in August 2010. Her remains were found 15 years later buried in the back garden of a terraced home in Derby where she used to live
Anna Podedworna (pictured) now 40, denies murder, preventing a lawful burial and perverting the course of justice. She told a TV reporter she had no idea where Ms Zablocka was
Jurors have been told the two women moved from Poland to the UK in 2009 for a better life and had found work at a turkey factory in Derbyshire.
Podedworna, who appeared in the dock in a grey tracksuit, wept as she recalled the day Ms Zablocka died, which she said was sometime in August or September 2010.
Giving evidence at Derby Crown Court on Tuesday via a Polish interpreter, Podedworna said their relationship was strained and they would frequently argue about money, Ms Zablocka’s reluctance to work and her drinking.
Jurors have also been told the their relationship had also started to deteriorate after Ms Zablocka refused to have gender reassignment surgery which Podedworna said her partner had wanted for ‘many years’.
Asked about the day Ms Zablocka died, Podedworna told how she returned home from work to find Ms Zablocka was ‘tipsy’ and angry as she was ‘five or ten minutes late’ home.
She said Ms Zablocka gabbed her and started strangling her, pressing her against the wall leaving her struggling to breathe. Clive Stockwell KC, defending, asked her: ‘What were you thinking at the time?
Podedworna replied: ‘That she was going to kill me.’
Podedworna said she tried to push her away and then put her hands around Ms Zablocka’s neck. ‘I also started to strangle her,’ she told jurors.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘And why were you doing that?
She replied: ‘To make her weaker and I thought this is going to make her weaker and eventually she will let me go.
‘I thought it was the end, finished, that she would kill me.
‘On the window there was a figurine. On my right-hand side and I grabbed it. I don’t remember, I remember it was quite heavy, some kind of a horse, I don’t know. I hit her.’
She said that did not work and she hit her again with the figurine and Ms Zablocka fell to the floor. She said she was not moving.
Podedworna said she checked her pulse and could not find one. She said she also tried to resuscitate her but did not call for help.
Podedworna was asked why she did not call the police or for an ambulance. She replied: ‘If I called, I had no witnesses and nobody would believe me that I was defending myself.’
Mr Stockwell said: ‘So what did you think might happen if nobody believed you?
She replied: ‘That I would go to prison for the rest of my life.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘So you did not make those calls and Izabela is dead on the living room floor. What did you then decide to do?
‘I thought I couldn’t leave her like this and I have to do something. I was just terrified I felt fear.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘Did you think what you were going to do with Izabela’s body?’
She said: ‘At that address there was a garden. I thought I would bury her there. I don’t know, at that point nothing else sprung into my mind.
‘I did not want to do that. But that point it was the only option I could use. I went into the garden. I looked around. I checked if there was a place where I could have done it. When I located that place …I took a decision I would bury her in the garden.’
She said she then returned to the house and tried to move her but found she was too heavy.
‘I just did not have enough strength to pick her up,’ she said.
‘I had an idea then to cut her down. It seemed the only way at that time.’
Mr Stockwell said: To cut her into two? Why were you looking to cut her in two?’
Podedworna replied: ‘Then I could have moved her.’
She said she got a knife from the kitchen and removed Ms Zablocka’s shirt and trousers, which she later ‘threw away’.
‘Then I was trying to cut her,’ she said.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘To which part of her body were you cutting her?
She replied: ‘More of less in the waist.’
He asked: Were you trying to cut her in two?
She replied: ‘Yes’.
Podedworna said it took ‘an hour maybe two’. She said she could not recall there being much blood on the floor.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘Having cut through Izabela and she is in two parts what did you then do?’
She replied: ‘Then I thought to wrap her into bags. I had black bin bags.’
Podedworna said she then put the two bags into the black wheelie bin which was in the garden before returning inside to ‘tidy up’.
‘I think I was washing the floor in the living room, in the kitchen,’ she said.
Mr Stockwell said: How were you feeling at that time?
She paused before replying: ‘Like some type of a monster.’
He asked her: Do you accept that you killed Izabela?
Podedworna replied: ‘I was only defending myself.’
Mr Stockwell said: ‘But do you accept that as a result of what happened with you she died?’
‘Yes’, Podedworna said. He went on: ‘And you cut her body? She said: ‘Yes’.
‘And you put her body in two bin bags?’, he asked. ‘Yes,’ she replied.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘And to say all that now, how does that make you feel?’
Podedworna said: ‘Despite that I did not want all of this, I feel guilty.’
Podedworna said she then went to bed and got up for work the next day.
When she returned home from work she dug a grave in the garden with a shovel and put the bags in the hole along with a towel.
Around two weeks later, she covered it with hardstanding, she told jurors.
‘I was scared and worried that somebody could find the body’, she said.
Asked why she threw Ms Zablocka’s belongings away she replied: ‘There was no need to keep them.’
She told jurors she called two ‘acquaintances’ who worked on building sites and she gave them money to put cement on top of where the body was buried.
After Ms Zablocka died, Podedworna ‘got on with her life as normal’ jurors have been told, and went on to have two children with a local man.
Podedworna told the court she wanted to go to police ‘all throughout those years’ but was scared of what would happen.
Asked what she was scared of she replied: ‘The fear of prison, the fear of not believing me, the fear of being on my own, that nobody is really going to listen to me.’
Questioned about diary entries in which she wrote about ‘sins’ she said: ‘Even if you take someone’s life by accident, it is a sin as well.’
Mr Stockwell asked her about the ‘secret’ she was keeping about Izabela. ‘How did that effect you?’, he said:
Crying she replied: ‘I lived but I didn’t live. Every evening I would go to bed with that thought, I would wake up with that thought.’
He asked her: ‘Were you living the life you wanted to lead?’
She replied: ‘No’.
Mr Stockwell asked why she emailed Derbyshire police in June 2024 telling them where the body could be found.
Podedworna said: ‘I don’t know I had the feeling it was the end and finally I have to.
‘So that she is buried properly, so that her family get peace… to free myself from it.’
Jurors were also told about internet searches she carried out for ‘reformed murderers’ and ‘great sinners who become saints’.
Mr Stockwell said: ‘Can you help why there are those web searches along those lines?’
Podedworna said: ‘For all those years I have been looking for an answer why, I never wanted to hurt anybody I never wanted this situation to happen I couldn’t understand why. I was searching maybe, I was thinking this is how God wanted it to go this way.’
Mr Stockwell said: ‘Did you see yourself as a murderer?’ She replied: ‘No.’
The trial continues.
