London, the UK, 2006. A former prostitute who married a pensioner believing he was a millionaire was convicted yesterday of stabbing him to death after he refused to pay for her breast enhancement operation. Tatjana Edwards, 27, met Gwyn Edwards, 72, in a massage parlour he visited as a client. The woman believed Mr Edwards was wealthy and her ticket out of working as a prostitute. But he had lied about his wealth and two years after they first met, Edwards stabbed the 72-year-old in the stomach.
Mr Edwards, a marketing consultant, was milked by his bride for designer clothes, jewellery, silk lingerie and trips to Estonia, where she began an affair with a younger man. Edwards will be sentenced today after a jury at Southwark crown court, south-east London, found her guilty of murder.
After her conviction Edwards burst into tears, having denied stabbing her husband in the stomach at their home in Ottershaw, Surrey, in June 2005. She told the jury her husband had humiliated her over a breast enlargement operation: "He promised me breast implants but on the day of the surgery he said he didn't have the money. I had to postpone the operation twice. He even drove me there once and told me he didn't have the money while I was talking to the doctor. I was very embarrassed.
Wendy Joseph QC, prosecuting, said Edwards had married her husband for money: "He was a short man ... a little plump, getting elderly, had a history of heart problems and had diabetes. You may come to the conclusion ... her motive was money."
But Ms Joseph said Mr Edwards had conned the prostitute, dropping hints he was a multimillionaire.
The jury read extracts of Edwards's diary in which she confessed: "I am not interested in him, but he can help me in my struggle." On another occasion she wrote: "I can see through people. That is why I can control and manipulate them."
Edwards's complaints were relentless. She moaned about the "dirty, tasteless" bungalow they lived in, her "ugly" bedroom, his choice of clothes, his early bedtimes, his unhygienic dog, his failure to wash his hands after going to the toilet.
She also peppered him with demands for money, once writing to him saying: "You know what I am used to ... having my breakfast, lunch and dinner on the table, massage treatment to my body and shopping every day."
Mr Edwards kept lying to try to hide his lack of money. When she fell in love with a £1.7m house, he claimed his wealth was tied up in an offshore tax haven. A letter from Mr Edwards in which he tried to fend off yet another demand for money revealed he was trapped by his love for her. "I don't understand you. For God's sake pull yourself together. There's more to life that just money ... I know you hate me but for my sins I still love you."
The 13-day trial heard Tatjana Plotnikova, as she then was, arrived in Britain in April 2002 as a would-be fashion student. But she was raped by two men, forced into prostitution and made to hand over her savings to her pimp. Eventually, she escaped her tormentors and some months after setting herself up in a massage parlour met her husband-to-be. TheGuardian.
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