Girl, 13, inflicted more than 140 knife wounds on victim, murder trial told

A 13-year-old girl accused of murdering a woman in a pre-planned stabbing inflicted more than 140 wounds on the victim, a jury has heard.

Jurors were told the teenager had conducted online research before the killing, while 43-year-old Marta Bednarczyk was probably dead before her body was burnt in a fire at a terraced property in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, in March.

Lincoln Crown Court, sitting at the city’s magistrates’ court, was told the defendant accepts unlawfully killing Ms Bednarczyk but denies murder, claiming diminished responsibility.

Opening the prosecution’s case, Crown KC Samuel Skinner said the girl initially claimed a third party had attacked the victim.

The court heard the teenager was taken to hospital, where she was seen smiling by a police officer and a nurse and did not appear to be “confused or responding to voices telling her what to do”.

Alleging that the killing had been planned for several weeks, Mr Skinner said the teenager sent messages to friends saying she “probably wouldn’t be in school for a while” and had “plainly thought she was getting away with murder”.

Mr Skinner told the court: “She also researched what the sentence would be for a 13-year-old convicted of murder.

“Whatever she might say now, we say that this killing was premeditated.”

During the Crown’s opening speech, it emerged that Ms Bednarczyk was pronounced dead at the scene after her body was pulled from the smoke-filled living room of the property into a hallway by fire crews.

A Home Office pathologist subsequently examined Ms Bednarczyk’s body, finding wounds to her face, neck and back, the trial was told.

Mr Skinner said of the defendant: “She used more than one knife. The pathologist examined Marta’s body and found there were at least 143 sharp force injuries – 65 were in her head and her neck.

“Seven were in the front of her torso. Thirty-three were in her back, 10 were in her arms and 18 on her hands and wrists.”

One of the injuries entered the victim’s brain while two others entered her lungs.

Mr Skinner said of the wound which entered the skull: “The pathologist said that the force needed to do that with the knife was severe.”

After the jurors were given initial legal directions by the trial judge, Mr Skinner told them the girl is claiming diminished responsibility, which would make her guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

He told the panel: “In truth this issue of diminished responsibility is likely to be the main focus of your attention in this trial because we, the prosecution, do not accept that she has the benefit of the defence of diminished responsibility.

“We say that we will make you sure that this is a case of murder because she intended to do really serious harm.

“We say it is murder because she planned the killing, and we say it is murder because she lied about what she did.

“And we say it is murder because there are genuine specialists in this field of psychiatry and psychology that say her actions were not caused by poor mental health.”

The prosecutor said it was “the sad truth” that what lay behind the killing may never be known.

He added: “Difficult as it may be to accept, this killing is nothing to do with her mental health – as much as we all might want the comfort of saying to ourselves that mental health and diminished responsibility explains what she did.

“Why do I say this?

“Because of the evidence of her premeditation – I have told you about the research that she was doing – and because of the evidence of her lies, and because of the evidence of respected and experienced medical professionals who say she did not have an abnormality of mental functioning.”

Ms Bednarczyk was not armed with a knife, he said, and the defendant’s age did not “explain or excuse murder”.

The defendant, who cannot be identified because of her age, sat on the back row of the court benches to listen to the Crown’s opening speech, accompanied  by a social worker and an intermediary.

The trial continues.