Girlfriend disguised murder as ‘suicide’
Mother-of-one staged scene to protect neo-Nazi ex
A MOTHER-of-one tried to cover up a murder by making it look like the victim had taken her own life, a court has found.
Egita Jaunmaize was yesterday found guilty of staging a suicide to impede the prosecution of her neo-Nazi boyfriend for strangling her housemate
The Latvian woman’s boyfriend was never charged because his brain function is limited due to a traumatic injury sustained months later while fleeing after a car he had hijacked crashed. He is currently living in a care facility, where he is spoon-fed.
However, his 34-year-old former partner went on trial at the Central Criminal Court, charged with impeding his apprehension or prosecution, knowing or believing him to have murdered Antra Ozolina, 49. Jaunmaize, of no fixed abode, admitted placing a blue cord around her fellow Latvian’s neck so as to simulate her suicide in order to make it more difficult to establish that her death was suspicious.
However, she pleaded not guilty to carrying out the offence, without reasonable excuse, at their home at The Old Post, Main Street, Kilnaleck, Co. Cavan on or about June 27 or June 28, 2014. The mushroom picker told gardaí that she was in fear for her life and acting on her boyfriend’s orders at the time, having just seen him strangle Ms Ozolina.
The court heard that Jaunmaize reported her housemate and colleague’s apparent suicide to the authorities on June 28.
Gardaí found the dead woman in her bathroom with a blue rope around her neck.
A bible and an almost empty vodka bottle were found nearby, and there were no immediate signs of a struggle. The gardaí suspected suicide, as did the coroner, who carried out an autopsy.
However, the gardaí still carried out inquiries. They discovered that the dead woman was planning a month-long holiday in Latvia to visit her daughter, who described her as happy and healthy. Her friends said that she was not the type to take her own life.
A forensic pathologist was called in to carry out a second autopsy, which revealed blunt force trauma other than the neck compression that had killed her.
An engineer also found that she could not have used either the shower rail or the towel rail in her bathroom for suicide. It became clear that the rope’s function was to cover up a crime.
She eventually told gardaí that her boyfriend had strangled her flatmate using his arm in front of her. She said she had tried to push him off his victim, but that he had punched her in the stomach.
She said he had grabbed her by the throat when she threatened to go to gardaí, and that she was afraid he would kill her too if she did so.
She said he had then asked her to put a rope around his victim’s neck to make it look like suicide. She said she was ‘forced’ to do it.
Ms Jaunmaize then agreed that she was under duress from her boyfriend, whom she described as a ‘skinhead neo-Nazi’.
She was released from custody, without accepting a garda offer of accommodation through St Vincent de Paul, and was seen in the man’s company a few days later.
The trial heard that her boyfriend had also been arrested after the killing, but denied the allegations put to him in interview.
Giollaíosa Ó Lideadha SC, defending, said his client was ‘guilty of having been in a relationship with a bad man and was guilty of going back to the bad man afterwards’.
However, he asked the jurors to consider both duress and reasonable excuse as defences that would lead to an acquittal for his client.
However, the jury returned with a guilty verdict by a majority of 11 to one. Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy remanded Jaunmaize in custody for sentencing on February 26.
Put a rope around the victim’s neck