Wife ‘cut off husband’s head and then fed body parts to their dogs’ | World | News
A 48-year-old woman allegedly attacked her husband following a night shift, decapitating him and feeding his genitals to their dogs after enduring years of domestic abuse.
The harrowing incident is said to have taken place when Maria, a Ukrainian woman, discovered her husband Oleksandr returning home in the early hours after work on August 23, 2019.
She stands accused of strangling him with her bare hands, and was reportedly “covered in blood” according to witnesses at the scene.
Police stated the incident followed a prolonged period of physical abuse at the hands of her husband.
Officers revealed she told them she “was suffering domestic violence for ages and murdered her husband to put an end to it and that it was the only way out”.
Maria is alleged to have first strangled her husband before decapitating him using an axe. She then allegedly retrieved a knife from the kitchen, severed his genitals and fed them to her pet dogs.
Maria is further accused of attempting to dismember the victim’s body, though she failed to complete the act before fleeing into the street drenched in blood.
Speaking to local media, neighbour Nadezhda Opanasiuk, who spotted the accused outside, said she struggled to believe what Maria was telling her until she witnessed the gruesome scene herself, at which point Maria admitted to having her husband’s head in a sack.
Opanasiuk said: “Her hands, feet and clothes were in blood. She said, ‘I am in trouble. I’ve killed my husband.’ I did not believe her. I thought they had a quarrel and she might have hit him. I went to see if he needed medical help. When I walked into the room, I saw his mutilated body. The bedsheets were soaked with blood. I asked her, ‘Where’s his head?’, and she replied, ‘there, in the sack.'”, reports the Daily Star.
Opanasiuk alerted neighbouring residents, who subsequently contacted the police. Officers arrived at the scene and detained Maria after she confessed to the killing.
Confirming the incident, police spokesman Vadim Artiukhovich said: “The suspect confessed in full at the scene. She was charged with murder and taken into custody.”
He added: “The woman said that she was constantly suffering physical and emotional abuse and did not see any other option to end her misery.
“Neighbors say they, in fact, saw the husband beating her up and chasing her with an axe a lot of times. However, the woman has never reported the incidents.”
Nevertheless, Maria’s son Viktor Fesianov has been unable to forgive her for her actions. “I know she is my mother. But I do not want to see her any more,” he told local media. Maria could face up to 15 years behind bars if convicted. The investigation remained ongoing in 2019.
