Girlfriend killer ‘in web hunt for fresh partner’

AN Estonian man who fled the UK after strangling his girlfriend left behind a note saying he loved her and was filled with remorse, a jury heard.
By The Newsroom
Published 7th Oct 2011, 11:01 BST

But before Nadija Ondzule’s body had even been discovered at the flat they shared in Mirfield, Dewsbury, Jevgeni Matjuhha posted a message on a dating website looking for a new partner, indicating his sexual preferences, Alistair MacDonald, QC, prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court yesterday.

He said it was the Crown’s case Matjuhha killed Miss Ondzule on the evening of January 20 and after withdrawing cash from her accounts flew to Amsterdam the next day.

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He then moved on to the Ukraine and to Estonia from where, on January 31, he posted the new girlfriend message.

Alarm bells had not rung about what he had done because he told Ms Ondzule’s friends and work colleagues she had returned suddenly to Latvia because her teenage son had been injured.

Mr MacDonald said on February 1 Matjuhha finally phoned a friend of Nadjia’s and confessed to the killing. She got the landlord to check the flat but he did not spot the body.

Later that day, however, she alerted police and they found the note on the bed and the body under the bedclothes at the flat in Oddfellows Street, Mirfield.

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Matjuhha, 23, denies the murder of Miss Ondzule, whom he met through the internet, but has admitted her manslaughter.

Mr MacDonald said Matjuhha said in Estonia in front of British police that he punched her in the face and strangled her after she told him a child she had aborted on January 17 had not been his.

He said it was the prosecution case he had not killed her after losing control as he claimed but killed her in anger. “It may well be that she told him that their relationship was over and that she no longer wanted him to live with her.”

He suggested on the evening of January 20, Matjuhha was thinking straight, since he not only made a search on the web in Russian for “prison sentence for killing in England” but looked at dating websites in Estonia and Russia, Googled the price of prostitutes in Amsterdam, booked a flight there and made cash withdrawals on Miss Ondzule’s bank cards.

The trial continues.