A cleaner accused of murdering her frail and elderly client told her husband that she had “hit her hard” and she was “going to jail” just hours after the bloody altercation, a court has been told.
Marjorie Welsh died in hospital in early 2019 after she was left lying in a pool of blood following a violent incident inside her home on a quiet suburban streetxjmtzyw in Sydney’s inner west.
Hanny Papanicolaou is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court where she has pleaded not guilty to murdering the 92-year-old on the grounds that she was suffering an abnormality of the mind at the time and could not tell right from wrong.
She has admitted being involved in a struggle with Ms Welsh and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Ms Welsh was found lying face down in a pool of blood with pieces of crockery embedded in her skull and six stab wounds to her abdomen.
She 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.
The court was told that before she went into surgery, Ms Welsh identified Ms Papanicolaou as her attacker to police and officers raced to the cleaner’s Roselands townhouse in southwestern Sydney.
Detectives spoke with her husband Nick Papanicolaou, who said she had returned home for 10 minutes before leaving again.
Acting Sergeant George Jachowski on Monday morning told the court how Mr Papanicolaou had relayed to him his conversation with his wife after she briefly returned.
“I said, ‘What did she say to you when she arrived home’,” Sergeant Jachowski told the jury.
“Nick said, ‘She said the old lady accused her of stealing and attacked her’.
“Then he quoted her saying, ‘I hit her hard, there’s blood, I’m going to go to jail, nobody is going to believe me. Her daughter is a lawyer, she (Ms Welsh) was throwing things at me’.”
Ms Papanicolaou was tracked to a public car park in Illawong and found sitting inside her Holden SUV.
In her police interview at Sutherland police station, she claimed that Ms Welsh had accused her of stealing $50 and attacked her with a walking stick, giving a detailed description of the events.
However, the court was told that when she was interviewed by a psychiatrist in June 2020, Ms Papanicolaou claimed that she could not recall the incidents inside Ms Welsh’s home.
The jury has previously watched 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.
The court was told that Ms Papanicolaou was left with $4.06 in her Westpac bank account on the morning of January 2.
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.
The trial before Justice Robertson Wright continues.
