Woman kills husband, uses body as fertilizer

A woman beheaded and dismembered her ex-husband then buried his body parts in her garden as 'fertiliser' for her courgettes, say police in Russia.

Olga Sterlyadeva, 32, killed spouse Alexander with two axe strikes to his neck as he slept, then used a chainsaw to cut up his body in the cellar of their home in Russia's Tatarstan.

The mother-of-three initially covered the remains with soil in the cellar but later dug them into her kitchen garden.

The couple were divorced but had remained living together in Staroe Slyakovo village because they had no alternative accommodation.

She 'cut her husband to pieces and fertilised her garden with his remains,' reported Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

She could not forgive him for previous 'scandals' in their married life, said reports.

The 32-year-old man was missing more than six weeks before police dug up the courgette patch and found his remains.

Russian Alexander killed by his wife

Sterlyadeva had secretly returned home from a hospital stay Naberezhnye Chelny with one of the couple's three children to move the dismembered body from her cellar to the vegetable patch, say police.

The woman has been detained pending the murder investigation.

She confessed to killing her ex-husband, said the regional Investigative Committee, which handles serious crime.

She faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted of murder.