A cleaner who allegedly murdered her elderly client by stabbing her with a kitchen knife and beating her with a walking stick has described the 92-year-old as “like a mother to me”.
Marjorie Welsh died in hospital in early 2019 after she was left lying in a pool of blood following a violent altercation inside her home on a quiet suburban street in Sydney’s inner west.
Hanny Papanicolaou is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court where she has pleaded not guilty to murder on the grounds that she was suffering an abnormality of the mind at the time.
She has admitted being involved in a violent struggle with Ms Welsh and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
On Monday, Ms Papanicolaou took the stand where she detailed the circumstances which led up to the incident which ultimately resulted in Ms Welsh’s death.
Ms Welsh was found lying face down in a pool of blood with pieces of croxjmtzywckery embedded in her skull and six stab wounds to her abdomen.
Ms Papanicolaou told the jury that she last worked for Ms Welsh two weeks prior during which they exchanged Christmas cards and gifts.
“She was such a beautiful lady,” Ms Papanicolaou said.
“She’s always asking how are you, how’s everything … She was always very nice with me. Always asking me how I am, how are my kids. She’s like a mother to me.”
Ms Welsh was rushed to hospital where she underwent emergency surgery but died six weeks later in February 2019 as a result of her injuries, which included a collapsed lung, lacerations and broken bones.
The court was told that a witness reported seeing a woman jumping the fence from Ms Welsh’s yard into an adjoining park before hearing the elderly woman’s cries for help.
Ms Papanicolaou later admitted to police to taking a cordless phone and kitchen knife from the scene that she later dumped in a bin at Canterbury.
She is accused of stabbing Ms Welsh with a kitchen knife six times in the abdomen and assaulting her with the 92-year-old’s walking stick and crockery, which was found broken on the floor.
The court was previously told that before she went into surgery, Ms Welsh identified Ms Papanicolaou as her attacker to police.
In her police interview, Ms Papanicolaou claimed that it was Ms Welsh who had provoked the struggle after accusing her of stealing $50 and lashing out with a walking stick.
Ms Papanicolaou took the stand on Monday afternoon where she detailed her traumatic upbringing in her native Indonesia including being hit by a car and sexually assaulted.
She also detailed her history of abusing marijuana, ecstasy and ice during her teens and her battle with depression.
She told the court that he was raised in a strict Muslim household and was told she had to be home by 6pm each night because that was when the “devil” came out.
She met her Australian-born husband in Indonesia before they moved to Sydney and she told the court that she fell pregnant in 2018.
However, she claimed her husband was not supportive, initially accusing her of cheating on him on a work trip to the United States and expressing that he did not want to be a father again at 60-years-old.
She said that after the birth of her son in September 2018, she suffered depression and anxiety.
The jury was previously shown CCTV footage of the 38-year-old playing the pokies at the Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL on January 2, 2019, before she went to Ms Welsh’s Holden St, Ashbury home where the altercation took place.
The court was told that Ms Papanicolaou was left with $4.06 in her Westpac bank account that morning.
Crown prosecutor Christopher Taylor has told the court that Ms Welsh had come into $8m after selling her Box Hill home before moving to Ashbury.
“I was started gambling in 2015 with a friend,” Ms Papanicolaou said.
“And then if I had stress, I ran away to the gambling.
“Gambling made me forget everything, made me feel happy. I forget about my pain … I can’t forget the sound in there, it made me feel addicted.”
The trial before Justice Robertson Wright continues.
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