Voices made me kill says man accused of beheading
Jennifer Mills-Westley, 60, was stabbed and decapitated as she shopped in the Canary Island resort of Los Cristianos, where she had settled after retiring.
Deyan Deyanov, a homeless drug addict who has been diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia, yesterday denied murdering her as his trial at the Provincial Court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife got under way.
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Hide AdAnswering questions with the help of an interpreter, the 29-year-old Bulgarian claimed voices in his head told him he was “an angel of Jesus Christ who is going to create a new Jerusalem”.
“They direct how I act, sometimes they say kill, fight, hit, pray,” he said.
After watching “tough” CCTV footage of the attack, he said it was “a montage, a film” and claimed he did not recognise himself in the images.
Prosecutor Angel Garcia Rodriguez said: “The accused approached Jennifer Mills-Westley, whom he did not know and who was shopping, attacking and striking her repeatedly with a knife in her back and neck until she was completely decapitated.”
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Hide AdJurors were shown a pair of nine-inch “ham knives” allegedly used by Deyanov, one of which was bent and bloodied.
Witness Davide Balsamo, an Italian who has lived on the Spanish island for five years, told the court of the moment he stumbled upon the horrific scene as he left a nearby hardware store.
“I saw a guy walking around with a head in his hand,” he said.
“I came out of the shop and suddenly I saw him come off the kerb, completely covered in blood.
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Hide Ad“I ran up to him and hit him with all my strength using my motorcycle helmet and knocked him silly.”
Asked if Deyanov was the man he had struck, he said “yes”.
The prosecution wants Deyanov to be sentenced to 20 years in a psychiatric unit.
Francisco Beltran, for the defence, told the jury his client was in “total disagreement” with the charge of murder against him.
“He has committed no crime, and it goes without saying that he has not committed the crime of murder,” Mr Beltran said.
He asked the jury to see his client as a “sick man” who, at the time of the killing had been living on the streets without a diagnosis or treatment for his mental illness.
The trial continues.