WILMINGTON, Del. - Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya was outside the apartment where Irina Zlotnikov was bludgeoned to death but did not enter the building, Malinovskaya admitted in a taped police interrogation shown in court Friday.
In an interview with Det. Joseph Szczerba of the New Castle County police, Malinovskaya admitted she had rented a car and drove to the murder scene - the apartment of Zlotnikov's then-boyfriend Robert Bondar - the night before and the day of Zlotnikov's death.
"I ended up everywhere. . I was just driving around," Malinovskaya said.
That admission came a week after Malinovskaya had denied renting a car and driving to Delaware in conversations with Szczerba in the days following the murder, Szczerba said in court Friday.
But Malinovskaya insisted on the tape that she did not enter the apartment, although she attempted to do so.
"I thought about getting inside somehow," she said, adding that she even tried using her own keys. "They didn't work," she said.
Malinovskaya also maintained that she was ignorant of Zlotnikov's death at the time she was near the apartment.
"I didn't know that somebody was inside," she said.
Initially, Malinovskaya appeared cheerful and friendly talking with Szczerba, but sounded increasingly frustrated as the interview progressed.
"It's inexplainable," Malinovskaya said, referring to Szczerba's suggestion that her footprints had been found inside the apartment and on Zlotnikov's body.
"I didn't attack anybody," she said.
Earlier Friday, prosecutors called on James Megraw, a maintenance worker at the apartment complex, and Lisa Premeaux, a resident of the complex, who both testified that they saw a woman wearing a hat or hood standing near Bondar's apartment in the rain.
In his cross-examination, defense attorney Joe Hurley attempted to prove that the hooded figure was not behaving suspiciously. Hurley pointed to the testimonies of both Megraw and Premeaux, who reported that the woman did not try to conceal herself from them.
The defense also called Kenneth Grabenstein, another maintenance worker, to testify, though both sides called his testimony into question over discrepencies with previous statements.
In court Friday, Grabenstein recalled the day of Zlotnikov's homicide as a normal working day.
However, having been reminded of his statements in previous trials that he had been sick and claimed to have fallen asleep in an apartment for several hours, Grabenstein did not dispute the apparent discrepancy.
The prosecution will finish showing the interrogation tape today and continue presenting its case.
