The mum of a cruel husband on trial for killing his wife and drowning her remains in a suitcase has told a court it was she who strangled the victim and chopped her up.

But the district court in Bremen, which summoned Ludmilla Baumann only as a witness, believes she is lying to take the hit for her son and get him off the hook.

During her six-hour testimony, Ludmilla, 66, told the court: “I killed Ekaterina!”

Russian-born Ekaterina Baumann, 32, mysteriously vanished on 4th February while going through an expensive divorce from her German husband Walter Baumann, 46.

Prosecutors believe Walter killed her at their home before chopping her up, stashing her body parts in a suitcase, and dumping the case in a river.

The case was pulled from the River Weser near Bremerhaven on 1st March.

Prosecutors believe Walter killed Ekaterina by doping her with drugs and strangling her to death.

But his mother told the court on 28th December: “I did it, not him. And I want to make that clear.”

She claimed she had slipped sedatives into drinks for the couple without their knowledge because they had been lacking sleep.

She said she had driven to her son’s house, where she had found Ekaterina sleeping on the sofa.

Then, she claimed, Ekaterina had woken up and hit her in the face.

Ludmilla said she had then put her hands around her neck and choked her to death.

Upon realising what she had done, she claimed, she had tried to revive her.

But when she had realised she could not bring her back to life, she had dragged her into the garage and cut her into “five to seven pieces with a large steel knife and a small ceramic knife”.

She had then stashed the body parts in a suitcase and cleaned the garage with hydrogen peroxide.

Walter had only discovered the grim crime the next day, she claimed.

Ludmilla told the court: “He started crying, asking me, ‘What should we do now?'”

But, she said, her son did not want to incriminate her, so together they had decided to dump the case in the River Geeste near Bramel.

Ludmilla sobbed as she told the court: “I loved Ekaterina like a daughter.”

But she claimed the relationship had broken down, accusing her of poor housekeeping and seeing other men.

She said this had driven her son to depression.

The court, however, believes her version of events to be fanciful and a ploy to get her son off the hook.

For this reason, she remains at liberty, while Walter remains in custody.

The next hearing is scheduled for 3rd January.

Earlier reports told how Walter had proposed to Ekaterina just one week after meeting her for the first time on holiday in Turkey in 2009.

The two had married in Bremerhaven in 2010 and their daughter Viktoria had been born in 2017.

Friends earlier told German media that after the birth, “Viktoria was his little princess, his wife was worth nothing to him anymore.”