Girl, 13, knifed mum 140 instances and despatched ‘I will not be at school’ textual content, jury instructed

A 13-year-old girl charged with murdering a woman in what prosecutors say was a calculated stabbing attack inflicted more than 140 wounds on her victim, a court has been told.

The jury heard that the teenager had carried out internet searches prior to the killing, while 43-year-old Marta Bednarczyk, a mum of three, was likely already deceased before her body was set alight in a blaze at a terraced house in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, back in March.

Lincoln Crown Court, convening at the city’s magistrates’ court, was informed that while the defendant admits to unlawfully killing Ms Bednarczyk, she contests the murder charge, arguing diminished responsibility.

In his opening statement for the prosecution, Crown KC Samuel Skinner revealed that the girl initially alleged a third party had attacked the victim.

The court was told that when the teenager was taken to hospital, she was observed smiling by both a police officer and a nurse, and showed no signs of being “confused or responding to voices telling her what to do”.

Claiming the killing had been orchestrated over several weeks, Mr Skinner said the teenager had sent messages to mates saying she “probably wouldn’t be in school for a while” and had “plainly thought she was getting away with murder”.

Mr Skinner informed the court: “She also researched what the sentence would be for a 13-year-old convicted of murder. Whatever she might say now, we say that this killing was premeditated.”

During the Crown’s opening speech, it was revealed that Ms Bednarczyk was declared dead at the scene after fire crews pulled her body from the smoke-filled living room of the property into a hallway. A Home Office pathologist later examined Ms Bednarczyk’s body and found wounds to her face, neck and back, the court heard.

Mr Skinner, speaking about the defendant, said: “She used more than one knife. The pathologist examined Marta’s body and found there were at least 143 sharp force injuries – 65 were in her head and her neck. Seven were in the front of her torso. Thirty-three were in her back, 10 were in her arms and 18 on her hands and wrists.”

One of the injuries penetrated the victim’s brain while two others entered her lungs. Speaking about the wound which entered the skull, Mr Skinner said: “The pathologist said that the force needed to do that with the knife was severe.”

After the jurors received initial legal directions from the trial judge, Mr Skinner informed them that the girl is claiming diminished responsibility, which would make her guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

He told the panel: “In truth this issue of diminished responsibility is likely to be the main focus of your attention in this trial because we, the prosecution, do not accept that she has the benefit of the defence of diminished responsibility.

“We say that we will make you sure that this is a case of murder because she intended to do really serious harm. We say it is murder because she planned the killing, and we say it is murder because she lied about what she did.

“And we say it is murder because there are genuine specialists in this field of psychiatry and psychology that say her actions were not caused by poor mental health.”

The prosecutor said it was “the sad truth” that what lay behind the killing may never be known. He added: “Difficult as it may be to accept, this killing is nothing to do with her mental health – as much as we all might want the comfort of saying to ourselves that mental health and diminished responsibility explains what she did.

“Why do I say this? Because of the evidence of her premeditation – I have told you about the research that she was doing – and because of the evidence of her lies, and because of the evidence of respected and experienced medical professionals who say she did not have an abnormality of mental functioning.”

Ms Bednarczyk was not armed with a knife, he said, and the defendant’s age did not “explain or excuse murder”.

The defendant, who cannot be identified because of her age, sat on the back row of the court benches to listen to the Crown’s opening speech, accompanied by a social worker and an intermediary.

The trial continues.