Trial gets underway for Surrey woman accused of stabbing mother to death

The trial for a woman accused of stabbing her mother to death began in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster on Monday.

Gloria Zerbinos, 30, is charged with the second-degree murder of 43-year-old Panagiota Zerbinos, who was found dead in her daughter’s Surrey suite on Nov. 8, 2012.

At around 7 p.m. that evening, police were called to Zerbinos’s suite in the 8400-block 148A Street in Fleetwood after Panagiota’s common-law husband found her body.

In his opening address, Crown prosecutor Craig Yamashiro outlined the witnesses he plans to call during the trial and what he expects them to tell the court.

A number of police officers will describe the evidence collected in the case, which includes surveillance videos.

Yamashiro said a neighbour in the adjacent suite will talk about noises she heard the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2012, and her two guests will testify about seeing Zerbinos a short time later trying to leave in her mother’s car, which she was unable to drive because it had a manual transmission.

A woman who lives next to Zerbinos’s grandmother will testify that she saw Zerbinos twice that afternoon. One time, she believed Zerbinos had a dog with her.

Yamashiro said it’s the Crown’s theory that after Zerbinos allegedly killed her mother she dropped off her young son and dog at her grandmother’s house. Zerbinos’s grandmother died in December 2013, so the Crown intends to play the audio recording of her testimony from the preliminary inquiry at trial.

Panagiota’s common-law husband will describe how he became extremely concerned when he couldn’t get in touch with Panagiota on Nov. 8, 2012. He went to Zerbinos’s suite, once on his own and a second time with his brother that evening.

They convinced the landlord to let them in to the suite, where they found Panagiota’s body on the floor covered with a blanket. She had been stabbed multiple times and a knife was protruding from her chest.

The trial is scheduled to last two weeks.