The mother of a husband accused of killing his wife and then butchering her body has stunned a court by claiming she carried out the gruesome murder.

Victim Ekaterina Baumann, 32, was drugged and strangled before her body was cut up into pieces.

Her remains washed up on the banks of the Weser River in Bremerhaven, north-western Germany, on 1st March in a suitcase.

Her 46-year-old docker husband Walter Baumann is currently on trial for her murder at the district court in nearby Bremen.

But the court was stunned when Baumann’s tearful mother Ludmilla Baumann claimed in a hearing on 12th October that she had killed her daughter-in-law.

From the witness stand, she claimed that she had drugged and suffocated Ekaterina before dumping her in the river in the suitcase.

Prosecutors, however, were not convinced and believe she is trying to get her son off the hook by taking the blame herself.

They say Walter Baumann drugged Ekaterina with a drink spiked with diazepam he had bought from a pharmacy in January.

Then he strangled her with his hands while she was sleeping, prosecutors believe.

They believe Baumann’s mother then helped her son dispose of the body.

They told the court Baumann had called his mother several times after the killing and she had gone to his house several times after midnight.

On Ludmilla Baumann’s confession, a court spokesman told German media: “Whether it is at all credible or not will be seen in the next few days of the session.”

Before her death, Ekaterina – from Saint Petersburg, Russia – had twice moved out of the family home to a shelter for women but had gone back on both occasions.

The suitcase contained most of her body parts, but her right thigh remains missing to this day.

Baumann had proposed to her just one week after meeting her for the first time on holiday in Turkey in 2009. Ekaterina was a student at the time.

The two married in Bremerhaven in 2010. Their daughter Viktoria was born in 2017.

Friends had earlier told German media that after Baumann’s daughter was born: “Viktoria was his little princess, his wife was worth nothing to him anymore.”