By, Robyn Rosen
1 min read
ByRobyn Rosen, Robyn Rosen
A Polish decorator has been found guilty of 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.
Her five-bedroom house had been "ransacked" after two burglars broke into the basement using tools, an Old Bailey jury heard last week.
They stole a gold necklace and wedding ring, a family heirloom belonging to Miss Kelmenson's mother, who arrived in England from Russia in the late 1800s.
Kuba Dlugosz, 33, was convicted on Thursday of her manslaughter and will be sentenced on July 22.
His DNA was found on chisels left by the basement door. 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.
Dlugosz, who is 6ft 6in and attended court in a grey tracksuit, refused to give evidence in his defence during the three-week trial.
The jury was dismissed after they were unable to reach a majority verdict on Dlugosz's co-defendant, Szymon Wyrostek, 26.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said that when Mr Wyrostek was arrested in September 2010, he told police: "I did not murder her, we went there for money. We put masking tape around her feet, you know, masking tape?"
But defence counsel Sally O'Neill QC said that the police had been "very anxious" to obtain a conviction and that they had "made up" his confession.
Mr Wyrostek, a pub cleaner, will learn today (July 1) whether he will face a re-trial of the charges.