Ealing Killers 'Took Body on Tube'
Ealing cleaner and two accomplices stand trial for murder of 94-year-old
A 94-year-old widow who survived the Holocaust after fleeing Nazi Germany was battered to death by her "greedy" cleaner, a court has heard.
Widow Thea Zaudy was "brutally" beaten and strangled by Ealing resident Jolanta Kalinowska in her own home, Oxford Crown Court was told.
The Polish cleaner, her son Adrian Ryszard Lis and his girlfriend Monilca Sienkiewicz then stuffed the old woman's body into a suitcase, it is alleged.
They took it from the woman's Notting Hill home on to a tube train, before being met by a friend who drove them out to a field in Oxfordshire. There, it is alleged they burnt it in a bid to conceal the evidence.
The trio then went on to empty the elderly woman's bank account of £10,000 in a week-long shopping spree last July, the court heard.
Mrs Zaudy, who came to Britain as a German refugee in 1939, ran a carpet shop for many years before her husband's death and then worked in a department store.
At the time of her death she was living in Notting Hill Gate, west London, and was "comfortably well-off".
Prosecutor Nicholas Dean has told court she suffered a "brutal death...at the hands of someone she trusted."
He said: "It involved brazenly going to her home and inflicting horrible injuries and concealing what happened.
"The defendant took advantage of the situation in effect to steal from a dead woman."
Kalinowska had worked for her as a cleaner and home help for some months and had keys to her flat.
Mr Dean went on: "The prosecution says she is a greedy and dishonest individual. Her greed and dishonesty is to blame for the killing of Thea Zaudy."
A post mortem examination found Mrs Zaudy died of asphyxia. She also suffered injuries to her face, scalp and thigh and fractured ribs. Mr Dean said the 4ft 11in 'little old woman' would have put up a fight.
CCTV cameras captured Kalinowska at Notting Hill tube station on July 11 last year, the day Mrs Zaudy disappeared, the court heard.
The next day Kalinowska and Sienkiewicz, 19, also from Ealing, bought cleaning products to remove all trace of her from her flat.
Sienkiewicz also sent her boyfriend Lis, 23, a text saying: "Now Zaudy God, yuck yuck then shopping."
The charred remains of Mrs Zaudy's body were later found by a farm worker. Police had no idea about its identity until friends in from Mrs Zaudy's bridge circle reported her missing.
Kalinowska denies killing Mrs Zaudy. The cleaner claims the woman had built up £10,000 in gambling debts playing bridge and had demanded to borrow money off her. She claimed she lent Mrs Zaudy £10,000, who then allowed her to use her account as a way of paying her back.
Lis, 23, and Sienkiewicz, 19, and Lukasz Gajda, 25, from Ealing, - who is said to have met them at Ealing Broadway and driven them and the body to Oxfordshire in his BMW - all deny assisting an offender by knowingly removing evidence. They claim they thought the suitcase contained wet blankets.
The trial continues.
February 21, 2008
