Painter and decorator Stuart Burns said he never meant to kill Lyndsey Bourne, 28, and was still in shock when he decided to saw her corpse up into eight pieces, which he later disposed of in woods in Leeds .
Det Sgt Shaun Bartram told a jury at Lee
ds Crown Court that Burns said he didn't know Ms Bourne was a prostitute when she went home with him on September 10.
He told police it was only when she quoted prices for sexual acts that he realised and "went ballistic", and after he grabbed her hair she scratched his face.
He told officers he held her by the neck to stop her clawing his face, and the more she struggled, the tighter his arm got.
"The intention wasn't to kill her, the intention was just to restrain her," he told police.
The jury heard Burns had put her body in a cupboard and left for work. When he got home he panicked and decided to saw her up.
He put the body in the bath and sawed it into eight, the head, torso, arms, and each leg into two pieces before wrapping the parts for disposal over the next couple of days at Woodhouse Ridge near Meanwood.
Officers heard how he told a taxi driver that a bloodstained bag contained dead rabbits, when it actually had Ms Bourne's torso in it.
Burns, 30, of Holt Dale Place, Cookridge, Leeds, admits the manslaughter of Ms Bourne but denies her murder.
The jury heard that a dog dug up part of Lyndsey's leg a month after she was last seen alive.
Police issued an e-fit of a man seen carrying a bloodstained bag. Burns went to police saying he thought it was him but had just been dumping some decorating equipment.
He was arrested in July, later confessing to killing Ms Bourne, but said he hadn't intended to.
He told the jury in evidence yesterday that he was drunk when he left the Birdcage nightclub in Leeds and was approached by Ms Bourne, who was "friendly and bubbly" and asked to come to his home for a drink.
The trial continues.
