Man accused of Tenerife beheading 'was drugged-up liar'

THE former flatmate of the Leith labourer alleged to have beheaded a grandmother in Tenerife has described him as a drug-addled fantasist who boasted of seducing women and partying with the Bulgarian mafia.

Deyan Valentinov Deyanov is alleged to have stabbed retired Jennifer Mills-Westley to death before severing her head in a store in Los Cristianos last week.

It emerged yesterday that the 28-year-old, who has been charged with murder and detained in a psychiatric unit on the Canary Islands, lived in Edinburgh for two years.

Today his horrified former flatmate Vlad Chmurny described his chaotic lifestyle of bingeing on heroin and cannabis, before losing his job and leaving the Capital last year.

The 36-year-old cleaner, who lived with Deyanov at a tenement on Halmyre Street, Leith, told the Evening News: "Deyan would always talk about his father, how rich and successful he was, but we didn't believe him because he had no money.

"He would always insist he didn't need his father's money and could make it on his own, and that he had these Bulgarian mafia friends.

"Deyan often disappeared at the weekends and would say he had been to London and Manchester and go to these mafia parties. He described himself as this playboy, and said he would have sex with lots of women."

Mr Chmurny, who is originally from Slovakia, said Deyanov lived with him for 14 months. He said: "Straight away it was clear that he spent all his money on drugs. He used to smoke hashish all the time and buy brown powder to smoke with tin foil, which must have been heroin. He had a Scottish girlfriend, aged maybe 23, who worked at the airport. It was strange, because she was nice looking and had a job and a smart uniform, and he would only shower once a month and smoke drugs all day."

He added: "I eventually threw him out. I just left his clothes outside and he went to live in Portobello. Some months later the landlord who had rented him a room came to find me because he didn't know what to do with him as well. I think he left Scotland after that.

"Despite everything, he never seemed like a bad guy. But who could do such a thing? Only a monster."