In a voluntary statement to police after his arrest Loizos Tzionis had confessed to the brutal murder of a teacher and his wife in Strovolos last April, a police witness told the Nicosia Criminal Court on Wednesday.
The statement was read to the court by prosecution witness and one of the police investigators in the murder, police sergeant Savvas Siamoutis.
Tzionis is charged with murdering Dina Sergiou and Yiorgos Hadjigeorghiou, who were found stabbed in their Strovolos home last April in what police believe was a botched robbery.
He and three other defendants have all pleaded not guilty.
In his statement, Tzionis said that he had gone to the house with Marios Hadjixenophontos, another defendant in the case, in order to steal a safe he knew was in the house and which he believed contained cash and jewellery.
When Tzionis had gone to the house of the slain couple to place mosquito nets in the windows some time before the murder, Hadjigeorgiou has asked him to place screws in the safe which was in a wardrobe upstairs.
Tzionis said he had planned the robbery with Hadjixenophontos in order to pay off their debts of €6000.
On the night of the murder on April 18, Tzionis, Hadjixenophontos, and the two other defendants Lefteris Solomou and Sara Siance met at his grandfather’s house to plan the robbery. He said he had drawn a plan of where the safe was in the house and that all four had then snorted cocaine.
He went to the house with Hadjixenophontos, taking a samurai sword and a knife with him. He entered then house and Hadjixenophontos remained outside.
According to the statement read out in court, Tzionis then said he started getting nervous as the cocaine started to wear off and was surprised to see that the safe was no longer where he had last seen it.
He then heard a woman’s voice, entered the bedroom where he saw a woman lying on the bed. She got up and he tried to cover her mouth to stop her from screaming, she pushed and then he remembered the knife he was carrying. “The first contact was as if she had come to the knife and then she fell on the bed.”
The defendant then heard a man’s voice. Hadjigeorgiou then came into the room and headed towards Tzionis and grabbed him by the throat and he stabbed him in self defence.
Tzionis then went to the bedroom of the couple’s teenage son who begged him not to kill him. Tzionis told him he would not hurt him because he had a son of the same age. He then locked the boy in a storeroom.
The trial continues on February 6.
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