A cleaner accused of murdering her elderly client claims she can’t remember the violent assault in which she beat and stabbed the 92-year-old and “woke up” covered in blood, a court has been told.
Hanny Papanicolaou is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court where she has pleaded not guilty to murdering Marjorie Welsh on the grounds that she was suffering an abnormality of the mind at the time.
Ms Welsh was found lying face down in a pool of blood in her Ashbury home in Sydney’s inner west with pieces of crockery embedded in her skull and six stab wounds to her abdomen.
She died six weeks later in February 2019 after succumbing to her injuries.
Ms Papanicolaou has, however, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and on Tuesday told the jury that she was responsible for the bloody assault that killed Ms Welsh, though she couldn’t remember the incident.
She has admitted that she stabbed Ms Welsh with a kitchen knife and assaulted her with her own walking stick and crockery.
Before the violent incident, Ms Papanicolaou played the poker machines at the Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL and was left with just $4 in one of her bank accounts.
Ms Papanicolaou also told the jury on Tuesday that she was aware that Ms Welsh had sold her previous home at Box Hill for $8m.
She told the jury that she was upset after losing her money gambling on the morning of January 2 and said she wanted to talk to Ms Welsh who was her “best friend”.
She parked her car outside Peace Park, which backed onto Ms Welsh’s property, and jumped the fence to get into her home before the violent assault.
Asked about the incident, Ms Papanicolaou said she “woke up” surrounded by Ms Welsh on the floor in a pool of blood.
“I just opened my eyes and I was looking at Marge,” Ms Papanicolaou said.
“What’s in front of the fridge with a lot of blood … In my head is just my son. I want to hold my son … The blood is on my hands. I was holding the knife.”
She added: “I wake up, I was like ‘oh f**k, what’s happened to me’. I just run. In my head, I just need my baby, I need my son.”
The court has previously been told that Ms Papanicolaou stole Ms Welsh’s telephone and later disposed of it in a bin along with the knife and her clothes.
Ms Welsh was rushed to hospital where she underwent emergency surgery but died six weeks later as a result of her injuries that included a collapsed lung, lacerations and broken bones.
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.
Before she died, Ms Welsh gave two statements to police in which she gave a detailed version of events and identified Ms Papanicolaou as her attacker.
The trial continues.
