Man Who Murdered Ex Gets Life
A jealous boyfriend who murdered his partner in front of their three-year-old daughter over her relationship with a police officer will spend at least 14 years behind bars.
Polish bus driver Piotr Zasada, 33, was jailed for life for the brutal stabbing of Katarzyna Ryba, 26, in Bournemouth after changing his plea during his trial last week.
Judge Guy Boney QC told him that the killing was a "ferocious and merciless attack on an utterly defenceless woman with a devastating weapon''.
He said he would serve 14 years and 62 days before he was eligible for parole.
Waitress Miss Ryba, who was also Polish, had sought protection from Dorset police after obsessed Zasada was previously violent towards her and she became close to an officer assigned to her case, Pc Richard Allen.
Anthony Donne QC, prosecuting, had told a jury that Zasada murdered Ms Ryba out of "anger and jealousy''.
Zasada went to the flat his estranged girlfriend was staying in armed with two kitchen knives.
He went into a bedroom and undertook the brutal attack as his daughter Michelle stood on the bed and pleaded with him to stop hurting her mother.
She then had to watch as heavily-built Zasada threw his barely alive ex-girlfriend out of a second floor window. She landed in a car park below.
The youngster has needed treatment from a child psychologist due to the trauma of what she saw, the court was told, as Zasada wept in the dock.
The court heard that Zasada had heard about the new relationship, plus others, but did not know it was a police officer.
Ms Ryba had been staying at a friend's house in April Court, Wellington Road, Bournemouth, when she was murdered on October 1 last year.
That evening, Pc Allen came to visit her and the pair engaged in sexual activity in one of the bedrooms, the court heard.
The police officer left at 10.30pm and nearly an hour and a half later, Zasada, of Norwich Road, Bournemouth, turned up and began attacking her.
Zasada, originally from Cracow, began stabbing her in front of their daughter and Grazyna Karbownik, the mother of Ms Ryba's friend.
Ms Ryba suffered eight potentially fatal stab wounds and 18 slashes, including defence wounds, to her arms.
Zasada was found by police sitting in his car having taken some medication and with superficial slash wounds to his wrists.
Speaking of the involvement of the police constable with Ms Ryba, Mr Donne said:
"There is no excuse for the subsequent contact of Pc Allen.
"Pc Allen overstepped that line and must answer for that elsewhere after this case.''
Oba Nsugbe, mitigating, said that a doctor said that Zasada suffered from an adjustment disorder which made it difficult for him to cope with the life-changing situation of Ms Ryba calling off the relationship.
He said that prior to a few months before Zasada had been a loving father and partner.
He explained that Zasada had spied on his ex-girlfriend and he was obsessed with her being unfaithful and that caused stress.
He said that Zasada was now remorseful for what he had done.
Judge Boney told Zasada that he was "not well-equipped psychologically to handle sexual rejection''.
A problem that he had suffered from in previous relationships, he told the court, and this had made him a dangerous man that night.