A Polish decorator has been jailed for seven years for manslaughter after he left an elderly Stamford Hill woman gagged and bound to a chair while he raided her home.
Eveline Kelmenson, 83, died a "slow death" of hypothermia and lay undiscovered for five weeks before she was found by relatives on New Year's Day 2009, her decomposed body still bound to a chair in her bedroom.
Her five-bedroom house had been "ransacked" after two burglars broke into the basement using tools, an Old Bailey jury heard last month.
Kuba Dlugosz, 33, was jailed today. He was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter, five years for robbery and four years for burglary, to be served concurrently. He cannot apply for bail until he has completed all seven years of his sentence.
His DNA was found on chisels left by the basement door. He has previously committed crimes in Poland, where he tied up two caretakers at schools in his hometown of Bialystok, and he was wanted on a European arrest warrant.
In October 2008, he broke into Sharon's Bakery in Stamford Hill, where he had worked as a decorator. Police identified him in that incident from DNA found on a segment of a plastic glove recovered at the scene.
His co-defendant, 26-year-old Szymon Wyrostek, is to be retried after the jury could not reach a verdict.
He denies manslaughter, burglary and robbery.
