Woman who killed housemate after 'sex game went wrong' is jailed

A woman who stabbed her housemate to death during sex games has been jailed for nine years.

Farm worker Eliska Novotna, 23, was topless when she trussed up Arunas Ramanauskas with the cord of a dressing gown and blind-folded him before stabbing him six times in a remote Borders farmhouse.

"We played sexual games, then I killed him," she told a police officer who found her wandering after asking for directions to Peebles police station.

Sentencing Novotna at the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lady Clark told her: "As a result of the stabbing he died and you did nothing to assist him."

Lithuanian Mr Ramanauskas, 39, known as ‘Russian Ronnie’ was found lying in a pool of blood in his bedroom - and police discovered sex toys in a bedside cabinet there.

Novotna, 23, from the Czech Republic, admitted she had stabbed Mr Ramanauskas at the Old Farm House, Easter Happrew, near Peebles last October 7 or 8, but denied murder, insisting she had been trying to defend herself from his sexual advances.

After an eight-day trial in Dundee a jury found her guilty of a reduced charge of culpable homicide.

Lady Clark said: "The circumstances were unusual and the jury obviously accepted that there was provocation in the form of some sexual assault on you at the time.

"That, of course, does not justify killing Arunas Ramanauskas. It does affect the way I deal with it."

The judge added: "A lengthy prison sentence is inevitable to mark the very bad conduct and the very terrible consequences of that conduct."

The trial heard how the two - who worked on the same farm - went shopping in a supermarket in Peebles just hours before the attack. CCTV footage showed them in the local Sainsbury's where they bought rum and strong lager.

Mr Ramanauskas invited Novotna into his room where they chatted about tattoos. Novotna, who had just moved into the farmhouse, claimed he started touching her "lovingly". She tried to escape to the kitchen but he followed, trying to dance with her.

Novotna said she went back to Mr Ramanauskas's room where he took off her top and bra. Again she ran, but went back into the bedroom armed with a knife. She told how he tried to make her perform a sex act. She tied the dressing gown cord round his neck and over his eyes then stabbed him. Two of the wounds were to his back.

Novotna also claimed she was so scared of Mr Ramanauskas that she barricaded the door of her room and slept with a knife under her pillow. After the fatal stabbing Novotna began wandering along the road to Peebles.

The trial heard how police searching the crime scene were briefed to look for any items which could be linked to bondage or violent sex. The search team found condoms and a parcel of sex toys.

Defence QC Jim Keegan told the court today that Novotna was not "callous" when she left Mr Ramanauskas dead or dying but her actions were automatic. "She was just not thinking at all."

The lawyer said Novotna also claimed she had been sexually abused as a child by her grandfather. Although there was nothing to back up her story it fitted her psychiatric profile.

"It is a very tragic case," said Mr Keegan.

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