'A trusting, compassionate and vulnerable person' - judge pays tribute to frail OAP slain in her Edinburgh home
Jadwiga Szczygielska, 77, suffered horrific injuries in the frenzied attack by fellow Pole Roman Frackiewicz.
The 44-year-old killer, an Edinburgh City Council refuse collector who paid just £200 a month for a room in Mrs Szczygielska's house, downed vodka before launching his attack during which she suffered 14 fractured ribs, a broken breastbone and collapsed lungs.
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Hide AdMrs Szczygielska let him stay after he was convicted of a domestic assault in 2018 and a court imposed a non-harassment order preventing him contacting the victim of the attack.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard that the priest at her church asked her to take him in.
During the trial, advocate depute Alex Prentice QC told a jury: "She gave him her bedroom and extended great kindness towards him."
Mrs Szczygielska came to Scotland from Poland in 2013 to live with her son. He had a workplace accident and returned to Poland but she stayed on because she had made many friends and worked as a childminder - sending money back home to her family.
On April 17 last year Frackiewicz repaid his landlady's generosity by launching the merciless attack in her home at Pirniefield Bank, Seafield.
The court heard that the injuries suffered by the victim were of a type found in serious road traffic collisions.
The jury was told that the rupture to her heart could have proved fatal, but that the fractures and lung injury she suffered could also have killed her.
Mr Prentice said: "The Crown is unable to specify precisely what was done to her because there were only two people in that flat when those injuries were sustained."
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Hide AdFrackiewicz denied murdering Mrs Szczygielska but was unanimously convicted by a jury.
The morning after the crime he contacted an employee with a community alarm service and said he needed an ambulance as he thought she was dead.
He phoned an acquaintance and said: "Jadwiga has passed away". He later claimed it was "probably a heart attack".
Frackiewicz, who has two previous convictions for assault, was jailed for life, with a minimum punishment period of 19 years at the High Court in Aberdeen.
Sentencing him, trial judge Lord Braid said: “This was a brutal attack. Mrs Szczygielska suffered terrible blunt force injuries including 14 fractured ribs, some in more than one place, and a ruptured heart. The expert who gave evidence likened the injuries to the sort that might be suffered in a road traffic accident. It must have been obvious to you that death was a likely consequence of the attack.”
He added: “I have been told that Mrs Szczygielska‘s son has not been able to find the words to express the impact of his mother’s murder on his life, but he has said that this terrible event will be with him for the rest of his life. No sentence I can impose can possibly make up for what he has lost.”
Lord Braid told Frackiewicz: “You argued with her for a period of hours before you viciously assaulted her with such force that, in addition to other injuries, her heart was ruptured. You then left her lying on the kitchen floor and went to your bed, without summoning assistance. You did call for an ambulance in the morning but by then it was far too late. While you did not intend to kill her, you displayed wicked recklessness as to whether she lived or died.
“I don’t know whether Mrs Szczygielska was aware of your violent past, but, in any event, she willingly accepted you as her lodger, even giving up her own bedroom to you for a period of two years, while she slept on a sofa in the living room. Your offence thus also displays a breach of trust and was committed against a trusting, compassionate and vulnerable person in what should have been the sanctity of her own home.
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