Dad killed her...
A woman fled to Britain to escape her abusive partner, but he followed her...
He didn’t take kindly to her breaking free...
When 38-yearold Gergana Prodanova arrived in the UK in December 2015, she wanted to build a new life for herself.
Having left her native Bulgaria, she settled in Exeter, Devon, and found a flat in Mount Pleasant Road.
Gergana hadn’t taken the decision to leave Bulgaria lightly, but she felt she had no choice.
For 16 years, she’d been in a relationship with Kostadin Kostov,
44 – and although they had three children together, it had hardly been domestic bliss.
In fact, their relationship was complex and troubled, as Kostov was a jealous, controlling man who was repeatedly violent towards Gergana, particularly when he’d been drinking.
Over the years, Gergana had found it difficult to escape Kostov – but by the end of 2015, she’d had enough of her partner’s abuse.
Leaving her children in the care of her elderly mother, Gergana fled to the UK to get a job and raise money for her family in Bulgaria.
She quickly found work as a
cleaner at the Great Western Hotel in Exeter. Her employers took an instant shine to Gergana as she quickly proved herself to be humble and hardworking. For a few months, Gergana’s fresh start appeared to be a promising new chapter in her life.
Until Kostov tracked her down and turned up on her doorstep in April 2016.
Her jilted partner had followed her, hoping to win her back.
He promised to change – and, hoping that his intentions were sincere, Gergana reluctantly agreed to let him move into the flat with her.
Kostov got a job as a cleaner at Exeter College, but his attempts to reconcile with Gergana appeared to be unsuccessful as he soon returned to his old ways.
In the May, Kostov flew into a rage, cutting up some of Gergana’s clothes, damaging her phone and injuring her finger.
Whatever lingering feelings Gergana may have had for Kostov, they soon dried up when she met a fellow Bulgarian national named Tihomir Todorov.
Tihomir was kind to Gergana and made her happy – something Kostov had never done.
The two fell in love – but by then, Gergana had become increasingly afraid of her abusive ex-partner.
She spent most of her time with Tihomir, only returning to her flat very briefly every few days to grab clothes and food for the two of them.
Gergana tried her best to avoid Kostov, who didn’t take kindly to her breaking free of his control and refused to move out of the flat.
On 4 August, Gergana went back to her flat once again – but that evening, at 9.20pm, Tihomir received a surprising text from her.
The message said that her mother had passed away and she’d rushed to Bristol airport to fly back to Bulgaria.
Only, something about her text wasn’t right.
According to Tihomir, the language and tone didn’t sound like Gergana, so he tried to call and text her repeatedly, without hearing back.
Four days later, the hotel
where Gergana worked reported her missing after she failed to turn up for her shifts.
When questioned, Kostov told the police that when she’d heard of her mother’s passing, she had left immediately for the airport.
Gergana was last seen on
CCTV walking to her flat, but there was no footage of her coming back the same way.
Trawling through hours of footage, police discovered a recording from the early hours of 7 August.
Kostov, dressed in tightfitting black clothes and a baseball cap, was seen walking the streets of Exeter, dragging a clearly heavy suitcase, repeatedly stopping to catch his breath.
Forensic phone analysis found that Kostov’s SIM card had been placed in Gergana’s phone in the Exeter area on 6 August, although she was supposed to have it with her in Bulgaria.
Investigators also liaised with the police in Bulgaria, who confirmed that Gergana’s mother was, in fact, still very much alive.
Kostov was arrested on 10 August and charged with Gergana’s murder.
Six days later, a suitcase matching the one from the footage was discovered by a railway embankment, partially buried beneath
the undergrowth. A Network Rail employee had come across the baggage after noticing a ‘foul smell’.
Inside, Gergana’s naked body was found.
She’d never left for Bulgaria. She’d been murdered, her body stuffed into a case and dragged across town.
Gergana’s remains were so badly decomposed that a postmortem failed to find an exact cause of death.
Police found further evidence by halting bin collections for the area surrounding Gergana’s flat.
Searching through 14 tonnes of rubbish, officers found the clothes that Gergana had been wearing on the CCTV footage from 4 August.
They were covered in Kostov’s blood – and after matching them with scissors found in the flat, it was clear that they’d been cut off her dead body.
But throughout his trial, Kostov maintained his innocence, claiming the man in the CCTV footage wasn’t him.
An expert soon proved otherwise by matching the walking pattern of the blackclad man in the chilling footage with clips of Kostov walking to work.
Kostov’s Internet history also showed that he’d been trying to find out how long it took for dead bodies to decompose. The mountain of evidence against him was huge.
While Kostov denied everything, prosecutors argued that he’d murdered the mother of his children out of sheer jealousy because he couldn’t bear to see Gergana happy with another man who would never have raised a finger to her.
After his brutal act, he’d even tried to cover up Gergana’s death by using her Facebook account and sending messages to her friends and family.
In May 2017, at Exeter Crown Court, the jury took just over an hour to find Kostadin Kostov guilty of murder.
In sentencing Kostov to life, to serve a minimum of 19 years, Judge Sir John Royce noted the killer’s ruthlessness and determination, but told him, ‘You are not as clever as you thought... What you did was callous, cold-hearted and selfish.’
Brazenly, Kostov appealed his conviction, claiming the case against him was flimsy and his trial unfair – but the following October, a panel of three judges upheld the conviction, calling the evidence ‘compelling’.
Perhaps some comfort for those who loved Gergana.
The mountain of evidence against him was huge