WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Turkey butcher, Anna Podedworna denies murdering her girlfriend Izabela Zablocka in Derby, who was found buried in the garden 15 years after disappearing
A woman charged with chopping up her girlfriend before burying her in a garden over 15 years ago was an experienced butcher who carved up turkeys at a processing plant.
Derby Crown Court heard that Anna Podedworna, 40, allegedly murdered Izabela Zablocka, who was “trussed up like a chicken you would see in the supermarket” before being placed into bin liners and interred in the garden of a compact terraced property in Derby.
Podedworna and her partner relocated to the UK from Poland and both were employed at a poultry processing facility called Cranberry Foods in Scropton, Derbyshire. But 30-year-old Ms Zablocka stopped communicating with her relatives in August 2010, the court was told.
Ms Zablocka’s body was discovered in the garden of a house in Princes Street in Normanton, Derby, where the pair had lived, in June last year. The grim discovery came after the accused emailed Derbyshire Police revealing her former partner was buried there.
The jury heard that “considerable force” would have been required to sever Ms Zablocka’s body in two, and that electrical tape had been used to secure her legs together before burial.
Prosecutor Gordon Aspden KC told jurors: “The police also inquired into the type of work that the defendant had performed at the time of the murder – the result was significant.
“The police discovered that the defendant had been employed as a skilled butcher. Her work had involved skinning, deboning, and portioning out turkey carcasses using a large knife.”
Ms Zablocka was employed at the identical facility as an “unskilled agency worker”, the court was told.
Records from the Cranberry Foods factory revealed that Podedworna had taken a fortnight off following Ms Zablocka’s last conversation with her mother, the court heard.
Mr Aspden described the defendant’s attempt to hide the killing as involving “deliberate, calculated, gruesome and time-consuming acts” spanning several days.
He explained that Ms Zablocka’s cause of death remains unclear due to the “extremely successful” concealment of her remains.
The court was told her burial site was “consistent with having been dug using a spade, a trenching shovel or a similar type of tool”, with concrete laid on top to hide Ms Zablocka’s “filthy, makeshift grave”.
DNA testing indicated Ms Zablocka might have owned a jacket discovered inside a Lidl shopping bag also interred in the grave, jurors heard.
The court was told that men finding the defendant attractive had “caused suspicion, jealousy, and conflict” within her relationship with Ms Zablocka.
Ms Zablocka’s daughter, who remained in Poland when her mother disappeared, informed police she thought her mother wished to have gender reassignment surgery but lacked the funds, the court heard. Podedworna, from Boyer Street, Derby.
She was described in court as having a “stormy and turbulent” relationship with Ms Zablocka and pleads not guilty to charges of murder, preventing a lawful burial and perverting the course of justice.
The trial is ongoing.