For over three years a UK chef stashed the body of his South African wife after beating her to death with a griddle pan, a British court heard recently.The court heard yesterday how 34-year old Peter Wallner, originally from Bavaria, deep froze his spouse Melanie, a South African expatriate, after allegedly killing her.
He also told the judge that 24 hours after committing the murder, he wined and dined his secret love before having sex with her right on the murder scene: the bed.
To mask what he had done, Wallner told family and friends that his spouse died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. At a memorial service, which was attended by 50 mourners, he filled cemetery urn with the ash from the barbecue. This urn has been buried on Melanie;s family farm in South Africa.
In the meantime, the woman who died in 2006 was deep frozen. The truth finally came out three years later when Wallner arranged to sell the freezer for £25 and dumped the corpse in a wheelie bin.
First, dustmen refused to take the bin because it was too heavy and then a neighbour spotted a protruding ankle.
Wallner married his wife, who moved to the UK from South Africa in 1995, in 2001. Four years later he landed a job as head chef at the four star Woodlands Park Hotel in Cobham where he is said to have developed an infatuation with Emma Harrison, the hotel's wedding planner.
"It appears the defendant had been seeing Emma behind his wife's back in the months proceeding her death," Miss Cheema told the court. "He had told Emma that he was separated from his wife and she lived in London."
