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The Independent
11 July 2013
A nurse accused of murdering her mother by hitting her head with a bottle told gardai she did not mean to kill her but wanted to shut her up. Lithuanian Greta Dudko (35) of Station Court Hall, Clonsilla in Dublin has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Anna Butautiene (55) at that address on December 24, 2010.
The Central Criminal Court has heard the plea was not acceptable to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The court heard Ms Dudko is a nurse who worked in the New Park Care Centre nursing home in The Ward in North Dublin. The jury have been listening to memos of garda interviews after the accused was arrested on Christmas Day 2010.
Ms Dudko told gardai in an interview that she hit Ms Butautiene twice over the head with an Irish Knights liqueur bottle in her right hand and her mother fell onto the bed.
Prior to that she said she pushed her mother against the wall twice and said she then got the empty bottle from the kitchen cupboard and hit her twice with it.
“I didn’t mean to kill her, just to shut her up for the night,” Ms Dudko told gardai. Ms Dudko told gardai Ms Butautiene came home shouting at her on December 24 because her son was with her father.
She said she was lying on the bed watching television and her mother hit her with something but she did not know what with and was pulling her hair. Ms Dudko said her mother had been checking up on her husband, saying he was seeing other women and that she was delighted when the couple decided two weeks before the incident to live separately.
She was not satisfied with my husband most of the time she was saying he wasn’t a proper father for my son, Ms Dudko told Gardai.
“I was very, very angry with her,” Ms Dudko told gardai. She said her mother was already in the bed when she hit her twice with the bottle because she thought she was pretending to be unconscious.
“I thought she was pretending. I thought myself I’d be dead,” she said.”I thought that hitting her to the wall wasn’t enough,” said Ms Dudko.
“I thought you know, you’re (Ms Butautiene) not going to ruin my life anymore,” Ms Dudko told Gardai.
She said she covered her mother up completely, cleaned the blood off the wall then went to bed and did not check on her the next morning or get help. The court had heard Mr Dudko called emergency services on Christmas Day after Ms Dudko told him what had happened.
Ms Dudko told gardai that she was taking antidepressants and sleeping tablets for anxiety and depression but she was not addicted to alcohol.
Previously Sergeant Joe Delaney said he arrived at the scene at 9.16pm on December 25 and had a short conversation with Mr Dudko.
He told Ms Walley the door of a bedroom was open and the duvet was fully up on the single bed but when he pulled back the cover he found the lifeless body of a middle-aged woman.
He said he saw trauma to the head and forehead and it was his opinion that an unlawful death had occurred.
Sgt Delaney told Ms Biggs that Ms Dudko was not detained and remained in the apartment on a voluntary basis.
Garda Kirsten Somers told Ms Walley she was informed on entering Station Court Hall that night the injured party had been dead for up to 24 hours.
The trial continues Friday before a jury of seven men and five women with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan presiding.