A cleaner battered and strangled a frail 94-year-old, stuffed her body in a suitcase and then took it on a train to meet a friend with a car, a jury heard today.

The defendant and accomplices then drove the body up the M40 to Milton Common, where they threw the case on to a manure heap and set it on fire.

The killing was carried out so that the cleaner and her three friends could steal her elderly employer's savings, Oxford Crown Court was told.

Polish-born Jolanta Kalinowsica, 41, was said to have carried out the brutal attack on July 11 last year, after she was caught taking cash from Thea Zaudy's home, in Kensington Park Road, London.

She returned the following day with her son's girlfriend, Monilca Sienkiewicz, to clean up the property and dispose of the corpse.

With the help of her son Adrian Lis and Sienkiewicz, they folded the body into a suitcase before being driven by Lukasz Gajda to a field to set it alight.

Nicholas Dean, prosecuting, said: "It involved brazenly going to her home and inflicting horrible injuries and concealing what happened.

"The defendant took advantage of the situation in effect to steal from a dead woman."

Kalinowsica, of Ealing, West London, worked as a cleaner and home help for her victim for some months before her murder and had keys to her flat.

Kalinowsica denies murder and claimed Mrs Zaudy had built up a £10,000 debt playing bridge and had demanded to borrow money from her.

Kalinowsica denies murder, Sienkiewicz, 19, denies two counts of assisting an offender, Lis, 23, and Gajda, 25, both deny one count of assisting an offender.

The case continues.