Murder-accused was 'obsessed' - Crown

Jacqueline Blackbourn, originally from Kent in the United Kingdom was found dead inside her house that had been set alight in Glenfield. Photo / supplied

A woman thought she was going to die when her partner strangled her on a kitchen counter - four years before he allegedly stabbed and strangled another woman, a court has head.

A 28-year-old man, whose name is suppressed, is on trial for the rape and murder of his former partner, Jacqueline Blackbourn. He pleaded guilty this morning to setting her house on fire.

Ms Blackbourn's badly-burned body was found at her home in the Auckland suburb of Glenfield on June 26 last year.

Crown prosecutor Siobahn Buckley said the man was seeing Ms Blackbourn for two years. She ended the relationship and ``he refused to accept that''.

Another ex-girlfriend of the man, who also has name suppression, told the court she lived with the accused at a house in Waterview in 2006.

She said he was using methamphetamine and later began drinking heavily.

The woman described a violent relationship and said on one ocassion she was kicked from behind before being dragged down the hallway by her hair.

``Then he got me up on the kitchen counter and was strangling me.''

She said his hands got tighter and she struggled to breathe.

``I thought he was going to kill me, for sure. I thought: There is no way I'm going to get out of this. He's a lot stronger than I am. I was just terrified, really.''

She said she managed to kick him away and he called his parents.

The woman told the court of two other attacks, where she was thrown against a bookcase and a computer table.

She said she stayed with the man because he apologised and told her he loved her.

``He was just ... it is sick to say ... You fall in love with him more because he can't live without you.''

She said during another incident the man phoned police, shortly before the couple broke up. The woman said the next day he told her: ``You're f***ing lucky I called the cops, b****. I was going to kill you.''

The man's lawyer John Anderson put it to the woman that the strangling incident never happened.

She responded: ``I don't want to be here right now. I'm not doing this for myself, I'm doing this for her,'' referring to Ms Blackbourn.

Four years later the man was in a relationship with Ms Blackbourn.

Ms Buckley said he was ``obsessed'' with her and sent her 700 text messages in the days leading up to her death.

But Ms Blackbourn had found a new man. Ms Buckley said the jury would hear about two ``encounters'' between Ms Blackbourn, her new partner and the accused at a North Shore pub.

``In a desperate attempt to try and get her back, he even tried to self-harm. That did not work, in fact that drove Ms Blackbourn away.''

She alleged that on the night of the murder, the man took a knife from his home and drove to Ms Blackbourn's house in Glenfield. He parked 200m away and walked the rest of the way.

``She was raped, strangled and stabbed to death by her ex-partner, the accused ... After killing her, he set her body on fire. She was 43.''

Ms Buckley said the man stabbed Ms Blackbourn so hard that the knife went through her sternum bone.

She told the jurors that they would hear evidence from a pathologist, neighbours who attended the party and a doctor who treated Ms Blackbourn for injuries after a fight with the accused, two months before the murder.