Tenerife: Family Of Murdered Norwich Woman Face Her Alleged Killer In Court

18 February 2013, 18:55 | Updated: 18 February 2013, 19:05

The family of a Norwich woman murdered in Tenerife have been in court for the first day of the trial of the man accused of killing her.

A man accused of killing a Norwich grandmother on the holiday island of Tenerife has denied murdering 60 year old Jennifer Mills-Westley.

She was beheaded while shopping in the popular resort of Los Cristianos on May 13, 2011. 

Homeless Bulgarian drug addict Deyan Deyanov, 29, denied murdering the grandmother of five as his trial at the Provincial Court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife got under way.

Answering questions in Bulgarian with the help of an interpreter, Deyanov told the court that he is haunted by voices in his head which tell him how to act. He claimed that they told him he was ``an angel of Jesus Christ who is going to create a new Jerusalem''.

Deyanov has been diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia.

Ms Mills-Westley's daughters, Sarah Mills-Westley, 43, from Norwich, and Samantha Mills-Westley, 39, who lives in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, looked visibly shaken as they attended the trial. Also at the court were Jennifer Mills-Westley's brother John Smith, 63, and sister-in-law, Julie Smith, 62.

Witness Davide Balsamo, an Italian who has lived in Tenerife for five years, described the moment he stumbled on the horrific scene coming out of a hardware store. He said: "I ran up to him and hit him with all my strength using my motorcycle helmet and knocked him silly.''

Asked if the defendant was the man he had struck, he said "yes'', adding that his hair was a bit longer then.

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