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Moment sex beast robbed father of his daughter
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-05 10:44

I heard fiend kill our little girl, but my wife was sure I did it...


HER LAST BIRTHDAY: A laughing Katerina pictured on her twelth birthday. `She dreamed of being a teacher or a pianist!she had such a bright future,' says her mum
The grieving dad of murdered schoolgirl Katerina Koneva last night revealed how his life was ripped apart after HE became the prime suspect for her brutal killing.

Distraught Trajce Koneva ended up in a police cell hours after finding his 12-year-old daughter's strangled body in their flat.

No one at first believed his story that he had chased her killer!Polish paedophile monster Andrezej Kunowski!after stumbling on him during the murder.

"I remember just banging my head from wall to wall in my cell," sobbed Trajce, speaking on the day that would have been his beloved daughter's 19th birthday.

"I couldn't believe what was happening. They must have thought I was a madman. They thought I had killed my Katerina."

And when Trajce's wife Zakalina was brought to the police station that night she believed it too!attacking him and screaming: "What have you done to our little girl!"

Beast

It was the beginning of six years of torment which tore Trajce's marriage apart and drove him to the brink of suicide.

But it ended last week when immigrant sex beast Kunowski (pictured bottom right) was jailed for life for a murder that stunned Britain.

"When I heard the jury say guilty I shouted `Yes'," said 48-year-old Trajce. "I had finally beaten the devil. I knew this man could never again do to anyone else what he had done to my angel."

But evil Kunowski's bitter legacy is that Trajce not only lost his daughter!but his wife and six-year-old son Christian too. "The anger and hate afterwards was unbearable," he says.

And by the time police came up with CCTV footage showing Trajce chasing Kunowski from the house it was too late.

"Things were never the same. Finally we could take no more of each other and we split up," said Trajce.

The website designer is still haunted by flashbacks of what happened on that dreadful day in May, 1997, when he rushed home from college to the family's west London flat because Katerina failed to answer the phone after she had returned from school.

"I could hear noises from the sitting room. I knocked on the door in case Katerina was changing and said `It's Daddy, open up'.

When she didn't reply I looked under the door. I saw a pair of black boots. I just froze."

He then ran outside to the window and came face to face with Kunowski, who was clutching a bag.

Thinking he was a burglar, Trajce chased him despite the fiend threatening him with a knife.

When he lost the monster he phoned police and ran home to break down the barricaded sitting-room door.

He found Katerina strangled with the cord still tight around her neck.

Just after the sobbing dad cut it police burst in.

"I was bending over her crying when they arrived. I remember one of the officers telling me to help him to resuscitate her," said Trajce. "He showed me where to push her chest. But I just couldn't do it. I was just so shocked

"I felt weak and hopeless. I didn't want to touch her in case I hurt her."

When Katerina was pronounced dead and dazed Trajce ended up in a police cell, his unbearable ordeal got worse.

"My wife and son were brought to the station to see me. I was wearing a white forensic suit," he says.

Hate

"Zakalina just started shouting `What have you done?'. She was kicking me and screaming at me.

"All I wanted to do was hug my wife and cry with my family.

"I had lost my little girl!but my wife was attacking me and my six-year-old son was looking up at me with hate in his eyes." After his release the atmosphere of hate grew in the Koneva household.

"Christian told me repeatedly that he hated me. I was so angry, full of rage and guilt, I would argue all the time with my wife.

"It was small things that would set us off!anything which reminded us of the pain of losing Katerina.

"I frequently told my wife I hated her. It was awful!I felt like I had gone mad with grief."

In 2000 they split, Zakalina taking Christian with her. By now devastated Trajce had tried to kill himself several times, slashing his wrists and downing pills.

"I wanted to die!I was in so much pain from losing Katerina," he said. "But in the end I thought I deserve this pain and I have to suffer."

His suffering, not knowing who had killed his precious daughter, lasted until 2003 when police arrested Kunowski after he raped a 21-year-old student. DNA tests revealed that he was guilty of Katerina's killing too.

At his trial it emerged he had raped up to 70 women and children in Poland!and sparked a huge row about slack checking of immigrants' criminal records.

Today Trajce and Zakalina are on speaking terms again. And finally he has grown closer to Christian.

But all he has of Katerina are his memories.

He believes she opened the door to Kunowski that day because she thought it was her daddy coming home!and she couldn't wait to tell him that she was top of her class for English.

"We found about how well she'd done afterwards!she never got to tell us herself," says Trajce.

"She was so bright. And I will always be very proud of my beautiful daughter."

 
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