Wheelie bin murder: Chef told mother-in-law not to see body

A chef who killed his wife and hid her corpse for three years in a freezer repeatedly urged his mother-in-law not to ask to see her body, the Old Bailey heard today.

Peter Wallner is alleged to have killed his wife Melanie with a cast-iron pan and kept her body in a freezer in the garden shed before moving her to a wheelie bin outside their house in Surrey last year. He was arrested when he returned home from a visit to Malta.

In a statement read to the court, Jeanne Oosthuizen, Melanie's mother, said Wallner called her in South Africa from the UK in August 2006 to break the news of her 30-year-old daughter's death.

Ms Oosthuizen said Wallner claimed his wife had collapsed in the night and died en route to hospital.

Ms Oosthuizen said Wallner told her not to visit the coroner to view the body as her face was "black and bruised" and "to try to remember her the way she was".

Wallner, 34, formerly of Hamilton Avenue, Cobham, Surrey, denies murder but admitted manslaughter, claiming he had not intended to do her serious harm.

Ms Oosthuizen's statement, read by prosecutor Bobbie Cheema, said her second husband Toby answered the phone when Wallner called to inform them of his wife's death.

She said: "I saw Toby's face and knew something was seriously wrong.

"I heard him say 'Pete, what happened?'. I tapped Toby on the leg and said 'what the hell is going on?'. He looked me in the eye and said 'Mel is dead'.

"Peter said he woke up and heard a crash and ran downstairs and found her downstairs.

"He said he started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and called the ambulance but she died on the way to hospital."

She went on: "He said her body was with the coroner, they would do a post-mortem and will specify the cause of death.

"I asked if I should come to London and he said yes. But he made me promise not to look at Mel.

"He said he would like us to remember her the way she was."

Ms Oosthuizen flew to the UK and met Wallner, and he urged her once again not to request to see her daughter's body.

She said: "He said 'please, you must not have a look at Melanie. I've seen her, the whole of her face is black and blue. Try and remember her the way she was'."

Ms Oosthuizen asked Wallner what he thought had happened, and he speculated that she might have suffered from a blood clot to the brain, the court heard.

Wallner later told Ms Oosthuizen the coroner gave the cause of death as a brain aneurysm.

Ms Oosthuizen said Wallner helped to make arrangements for a wake in the UK and a memorial service in Pretoria, South Africa.

"He said we must look for a very nice urn," she said.

"He said we should look for a blue urn, because she liked the colour. He said he would fly out with her ashes."

Ms Oosthuizen said at the memorial service, Wallner was "very calm and collected" while she and her family were in tears.

"Peter was acting as if what happened hadn't happened to him."

Wallner spoke at the service and said "he didn't believe in heaven, but he had heaven on Earth with Melanie".

Another memorial service was held at the Thistle Hotel back in the UK where Mrs Wallner had worked, the court heard.

Ms Oosthuizen said she started to become suspicious about the circumstances surrounding her daughter's death in 2007 and requested her death certificate.

"What I suspected I don't know," she said. "But the devil was poking. My suspicions kept growing."

Ms Oosthuizen and her husband repeatedly asked Wallner for the documentation.

He would promise to deliver it to them by different means but avoided actually handing the certificate over, the court heard.

When Wallner was due to present them with the certificate, he would make excuses, often concerning the health and well-being of his family.

"I felt terrible for this man," Ms Oosthuizen said. "He lost his wife, then his father was ill and then his mother died."

Ms Oosthuizen decided not to chase Wallner for the certificate.

She said she last heard from him on Boxing Day 2008.

She and her husband were in the UK and requested to see him to collect the death certificate, but he told her he was in Portugal "spending his inheritance".

Yesterday the court heard the landlord saw Mrs Wallner's ankle when he opened up the wheelie bin last June.

The jury heard Wallner, who had a succession of girlfriends after his wife's death, moved to Malta with his new love Lilia Fenech but was arrested on his return.

He told police his wife had attacked him and he hit her head with a griddle pan.

But Miss Cheema said Mrs Wallner was found to have been wearing an eye mask - indicating she could have been asleep when she was attacked.

The prosecution said Wallner slept with another woman, wedding planner Emma Harrison, on the mattress the following night, while Mrs Warner's body lay in the house.

Wallner, who had said his wife struck him first with a rolling pin, was no longer claiming he acted in self-defence, the jury heard.

The court heard the couple met at a hotel where they were working in 2001 and married soon afterwards. But by the time they moved to Hamilton Avenue in 2005, the marriage was breaking down.

It had not been possible to say exactly what caused Mrs Wallner's death, but it might have been that she suffocated on her blood, said Miss Cheema.