‘Victim’s daughter heard mum shout: don’t do this’

Desperate shouts and then silence was what the 19-year-old daughter of Hungarian murder victim Yvette Gajda heard before finding her mother in a pool of blood last November. The 38-year-old mother of five was lying face down on a pillow in the middle of the corridor of an apartment she shared with her former partner, Laszlo Nandor Marton. She had been stabbed more than 60 times with a large pair of scissors – on her head, neck, shoulders and upper back. Mr Marton, 57, was nearly unconscious, hugging her blood-soaked body and suffering from some nine stab wounds to the left of his chest after he allegedly tried to commit suicide with the murder weapon. The victim’s daughter, Tamara Barkoczi, told the police that she heard her mother shouting in Hungarian, “Don’t do this to me, I have five children!” before silence fell. She entered the apartment and found her mother dead. She raced to a neighbour’s flat who then accompanied her back to the apartment before calling the police. The heart-wrenching details emerged as Police Inspector Keith Arnaud testified against Mr Marton, who stands charged with killing Ms Gajda on November 27. Ms Barkoczi said that on the night before the murder,...