Jurors were shown CCTV footage of a man wheeling a suitcase just hours before the dead body of his lover was found "curled" up in a suitcase, during a murder trial today.

The jury at Central Criminal Court watched as murder accused Laszlo Gyarmati, 29, wheeled the large black suitcase in Lee Road, Mill Hill, where he had spent the night with Alexandra Kovacs.

The evening before, the pair had caught a bus to Sam’s Chicken in Hendon Central.

After paying, the pair left and went to Miss Kovacs’s home in Lee Road, which she shared with a group of Hungarian nationals. In the early hours of Thursday, July 18, Miss Kovacs was killed.

The following day Mr Gyarmati was caught on CCTV wheeling the case from Lee Road to Dollis Road, near to Dollis Valley Green Walk.

The next piece of footage showed him walking back to his home in Station Road, Finchley, without the case.

The court heard that on the same day, two Romanian nationals found the suitcase in bushes in Dollis Valley Green Walk.

They opened it and discovered a naked body “curled up” in the foetal position with a purple towel over the head.

One of the Romanians was afraid of his immigration status and so did not call police straight away, but later asked a friend to make the call.

On July 21 – two days after Miss Kovacs was killed – police found her body in Dollis Valley Green Walk, with “large amounts of flies and maggots” about her head. 

Mr Gyarmati was arrested and examined by a doctor who noticed a “small redness” on his middle knuckle.

Mr Gyarmati has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murdering 25-year-old Hungarian national, Miss Kovacs.

The trial continues.