A MONSTER who bludgeoned her girlfriend to death with a horse figurine before burying her body in the garden has been found guilty.

Podedworna, 40, was convicted of killing Izabela Zablocka, 30, at their home in Normanton, Derbyshire – where her body laid undiscovered for 15 years.

Podedworna then put Ms Zablocka, who was a mother of a young daughter at the time, in plastic bin bags and buried her in a hole in the garden.

Now, Podedwarna has been found guilty at Derby Crown Court of murdering her former girlfriend after Zablocka’s remains were found.

She was convicted of murder by a jury today.

Podedworna showed no emotion when the jury returned their verdict, after deliberating for seven hours and six minutes.

The 40-year-old, of Boyer Street, in Derby, will be sentenced on Wednesday.

The jury was told that the two women had moved to the UK together from Poland in search of work and lived in the Normanton area of Derby.

Zablocka then lost contact with her family in August 2010 and was reported to the police as missing.

Prosecutor Gordon Aspden KC said that “mounting pressure” caused Podedworna to “crack” and email the police in 2025 when a Polish TV journalist flew to the UK to interview her.

Podedworna was a skilled butcher whose work involved “skinning, deboning and portioning out turkey carcasses using a large knife”.

She had cut Izabela‘s body in half and stored it in bin bags before burying her in a “filthy makeshift grave” in 2010.

Her partner’s dismembered body was buried in the back garden, before concrete hardstanding was laid over the top.

The body lay buried in the garden until June 1, 2025, after Podedworna emailed Derbyshire Police to tell them it could be found there, it was said.

Speaking about the day Ms Zablocka died, the 40-year-old told the jury she wanted her “to leave me alone, to let me go”.

Asked how she felt carrying out the grisly crime, Podedworna previously said: “That I’m some type of a monster.”

Podedworna claimed she tried to grab Ms Zablocka’s neck before she got hold of a figurine of a horse from a window and hit her with it.

She said: “I checked her pulse on the neck. I was trying to resuscitate her.”

Asked why she did not call the police or an ambulance when she could not find a pulse, the defendant said she had “no witness”.

‘MONSTER’

Podedworna added that she thought she would “go to prison for the rest of my life”.

The 40-year-old said: “I was just terrified, I felt fear.

“I thought I will bury her. I took the decision I would bury her in the garden.

“I wanted to pick her up whole. I just did not have the strength to pick her up. I had an idea to cut her down.

“It seemed the only way… to cut her into two.”

Zablocka’s daughter, Katarzyna, 25, said her mother would occasionally try to “present herself more as a male than a female”.

Katarzyna, who was living in Poland when her mum went missing, told police she believed her mother wanted gender reassignment surgery.

But Zablocka could not afford to pay for the operation, she said.

Katarzyna claimed she overheard conversations between her mum and Podedworna about “changing my mother’s gender”.

Katarzyna stayed in Poland with her family and the mum often called to check on her, it was said.

The couple worked at Cranberry Foods, a poultry factory in Scropton, Derbyshire, before Ms Zablocka stopped contacting her family.

Her final phone call came on August 28, 2010, before she was murdered by Podedworna.