Woman 'stabbed housemate to death' after 'playing sexual games'

Court: Novotna is on trial at the High Court in Dundee.

A woman accused of murdering her housemate just days after she moved in told police "we played some sexual games, then I killed him", a court has heard.

Eliska Novotna, 23, denies stabbing Arunas Ramanauskas to death at a remote farm house near Peebles in October last year.

On the first day of her trial at the High Court in Dundee on Friday, the jury heard Novotna was spotted walking towards Peebles police station shortly after Mr Ramanauskas died.

PC Vanessa Hamilton, 34, told the court she saw Novotna at around 4am walking on her own and stopped to ask if she was OK.

The officer told how Novotna approached her window and said: "I'm looking for the police station. I've just killed somebody."

PC Hamilton said Novotna appeared "jovial and calm" and that "in hindsight" she should have taken Novotna into her car, but instead told her to meet her at the station around 100 metres away.

Minutes later, as PC Hamilton dealt with another prisoner, Novotna knocked on the police station's door.

The officer said Novotna was directed to the public entrance and when she met the accused she was making a 999 call.

The court heard a recording of the call, in which Novotna told an operator: "Someone help me - I'm at police station and no-one is here. I want to report I've killed someone."

Novotna then told PC Hamilton: "I want to report a murder - I've killed someone."

She added: "We went to bed and played some sexual games. I then took a knife and killed him - I don't know, four times, six times. I can't explain it - I don't have an excuse for what I've done. I don't understand myself why I did it."

She then told PC Hamilton that she had washed the knife in a bathroom.

Advocate depute Richard Goddard asked PC Hamilton: "Was there any sort of reference to any kind of attack on herself?"

PC Hamilton replied: "No."

Earlier, Mr Ramanauskas's sister told the court her brother, known to friends as Russian Ronnie, had moved to Scotland from his native Lithuania around seven years ago.

Gitana Ramanauskaite, 38, cried as she described her brother, who died aged 39, as her "number one" and said he was a "good man".

She said: "We grew up very close. He was married a long time ago and had a daughter who he was very close with as well. He was a very helpful and a very honest man.

"The last time I saw him was about a week before he died. He came to visit me at my house in Peebles - he was as always a very cheerful man."

She added: "We were told by the police that he died on October 8. The next day I went to identify his body."

The court was also shown a series of CCTV clips from a Sainsbury's supermarket in Peebles, showing Novotna and Mr Ramanauskas buying alcohol on the night he died.

Novotna, 23, denies a charge of murdering Mr Ramanauskas on October 7 or 8 last year at The Old Farm House, Easter Happrew Peebles, by repeatedly stabbing him on the body with a knife.

She further denies attempting to defeat the ends of justice by refusing to comply with a warrant instructing her to submit to medical examination at Borders General Hospital, Melrose, on October 8, 2011.

Novotna has lodged a special defence of self defence in the case.

The trial, before Lady Clark of Calton and a jury of nine men and six woman, continues.

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