A woman murdered her girlfriend and dismembered her body before putting her remains in black plastic bin bags and burying them in her garden where she remained for 15 years, a court heard.
Anna Podedworna, 40, killed Izabela Zablocka, 30, out of ‘sexual jealousy’ before covering it up with a series of ‘deliberate, calculated, gruesome, and time-consuming acts’, jurors were told.
It was only when a journalist from Poland contacted Podedworna last year enquiring about Miss Zablocka’s whereabouts that she emailed Derbyshire police telling them they would find her body under concrete in the back garden.
Miss Zablocka had suffered a ‘violent death’ at the house the two woman shared in Derby and her body was found ‘trussed up like a chicken’ the court was told.
Podedworna, who listened in the dock wearing a grey sweatshirt and black glasses, helped by a Polish interpreter, denies murder, preventing a lawful burial and perverting the course of justice between August 27, 2010, and June 2, 2025.
Opening the case at Derby Crown Court on Wednesday, Gordon Aspden KC, prosecuting, warned jurors about details of the case they might find distressing.
He said Podedworna has been employed as a ‘skilled butcher’ and had cut Miss Zablocka’s body in half before hiding her remains in a ‘filthy, makeshift grave’.
Mr Aspden said her actions showed how she was ‘determined to conceal what she had done, and determined to destroy all incriminating evidence of the murder she had committed’.
She then ‘got on with her life as normal’, Mr Aspden told jurors.
Anna Podedworna, pictured, who is charged with killing Izabela Zablocka, who went missing 15 years ago
Izabela Zablocka, 30, moved to Britain in 2009 and lived in Normanton, Derby. She last had contact with her family in Poland in August 2010
The court heard Miss Zablocka was born and brought up in Trzebiatow, a small town in north-west Poland.
She married and had a daughter called Katarzyna, but the relationship did not last and they separated, and soon afterwards Miss Zablocka began a sexual relationship with Podedworna.
Mr Aspden said the two women rented a flat together in Poland, but did not have much money, so in 2009 they travelled to the UK in search of work.
Miss Zablocka’s daughter, then aged nine, was left behind with relatives in Poland.
Initially Miss Zablocka and Podedworna lived together in London, but in 2010 they moved up to Derby and to a small terraced house in the Normanton area of the city.
The two women found work at a local poultry factory – Cranberry Foods in Scropton, Derbyshire.
Mr Aspden said that while in the UK Miss Zablocka kept in touch with her family in Poland by telephone and would call them every few days without fail.
On Saturday, August 28, 2010, Miss Zablocka called her mother in the usual way and ‘they chatted, they caught up with each other’s news’.
A scene from the police investigation in June 2025, which led to the discovery of Izabela Zablocka’s remains
‘Everything seemed quite normal,’ Mr Aspden said. ‘Nothing was amiss.’
It was the last time they would hear from her.
Mr Aspden said: ‘Following this telephone call Izabela’s family neither saw nor heard from her ever again.
‘To all intents and purposes she completely disappeared off the face of the earth. What had happened to Izabela? Where was she?’
He said shortly after her final telephone call to her mother Podedworna murdered her.
Mr Aspden said that having done so she then ‘dismembered Izabela’s body by cutting it in half with a large knife; trussed it up with electrical tape; placed these now bloody human remains in black plastic bin bags; and buried them in the back garden’.
‘A section of concrete hardstanding was then laid over the top to hide Izabela’s filthy, makeshift grave,’ he said.
‘By her conduct the defendant demonstrated that she was determined to conceal what she had done, and determined to destroy all incriminating evidence of the murder she had committed.’
He said her ‘post-murder cover-up’ involved a ‘series of deliberate, calculated, gruesome, and time-consuming acts which she carried out with resolve and purpose over a period of several days.’
Mr Aspden said precisely how and why the defendant murdered Miss Zablocka ‘only she now knows and, for obvious reasons, she will never reveal’.
But he said there was evidence of sexual jealousy, and of the relationship having been a stormy and turbulent one.
He said: ‘It was against this toxic backdrop and in this volatile setting that the murder of Izabela Zablocka was committed.’
Miss Zablocka’s family reported her missing; first to the police in the UK in November 2010, and then to the police in Poland in January 2011.
Mr Aspden said her family was ‘forced to live in a state of constant anxiety and dread – unsure whether she was dead or alive’ but to their ‘lasting credit’ never gave up on her and clung to the hope that one day they would see her again.
The court heard that in 2024, Miss Zablocka’s daughter, by then in her mid-twenties, contacted a Polish organisation named ‘Missing for Years’ asking for help finding her mother.
The organisation contacted Podedworna, who was still living in Derby, but she denied knowing Miss Zablocka and said she did not know what had happened to her.
Then in May 2025 a Polish television journalist named Rafal Zalewski contacted the defendant and requested an interview with her.
Police made the ‘grim and bleak discovery’ on June 1 last year at a property in Normanton, Derby. By that time all that remained was a skeleton and a few small fragments of human tissue. Subsequent DNA tests established the remains belonged to Miss Zablocka
Mr Aspden said it was a ‘tipping point’. He said: ‘At last the defendant could feel that justice was finally catching up with her. The mounting pressure caused her to crack.’
On May 21, 2025, Podedworna emailed Derbyshire Police and told them that she wished to provide them with evidence.
She later told them they would find Miss Zablocka’s body buried in the back garden of their former home in Princes Street, Derby.
Podedworna went to a police station where she told officers Miss Zablocka had died by accident during a violent confrontation between them and she was defending herself.
Mr Aspden said ‘this new and freshly-created claim of self-defence was yet another lie by the defendant to conceal her guilt, to cover up the murder, and to deceive and hoodwink those around her’.
She told police there had been an ‘accident’ and the two women had fought and she had hit Miss Zablocka while trying to defend herself. She said it ‘happened very fast…’ adding: ‘She wasn’t alive.’
The court heard that during the 15 years following the murder, she had ‘got on with her life as normal’. Her mother and sister had joined her in the UK. She then went on to form a relationship with a local man and had two children by him.
Her house was searched when police found a diary which contained extensive references to religion including one note which read: ‘I accept that I have sinned against a perfect God.’
Police made the ‘grim and bleak discovery’ on Sunday, June 1 last year. By that time all that remained was a skeleton and a few small fragments of human tissue.
Subsequent DNA tests established the remains belonged to Miss Zablocka.
Officers also found an ‘animal burial site’ just above the grave where Miss Zablocka’s remains were found containing bones belonging to two dogs, at least three cats and other animals.
Mr Aspden said Miss Zablocka was found ‘trussed up like a chicken’.
He said both of her legs had been hyperflexed backwards and upwards at the knees. Electrical tape had then been used to bind them tightly into this position.
The backs of her calves had been tied to the backs of her thighs.
‘In short, the lower half of her body had been trussed up like a chicken you might see in a supermarket.
‘Soil and other debris found inside the two black bin bags was sieved and a number of further body parts were recovered.’
Mr Aspden said Podedworna’s cover-up had proved to be ‘extremely successful’ and she had, ‘with a great deal of effort’ destroyed all evidence of how she had murdered Miss Zablocka.
Due to the passage of time, and the state in which the remains were found, it has not been possible to ascertain her cause of death, he said.
Jurors were told that during the investigation police discovered Podedworna had been employed as a skilled butcher and her work had involved skinning, deboning, and portioning out turkey carcasses using a large knife.
She had been part of team known as ‘Cutting 1’.
Jurors were also told that before the body had been found, a Polish journalist travelled to the UK to interview Podedworna about Miss Zablocka’s disappearance.
He said she told him that Miss Zablocka had problems with alcohol but denied knowing anything about her disappearance.
The journalist said she told him that in 2010 she had made it ‘a condition’ of their relationship continuing that Miss Zablocka undergo gender reassignment surgery. She had told him that Izabela had agreed to do so, but had later lost interest, and this had caused conflict between them.
Podedworna was arrested on suspicion of murder. During eight subsequent interviews she answered no comment.
The trial continues.
