A cleaner does not know why she fled her 92-year-old client lying bloodied on the floor with the knife she says the older woman used to stab herself with, a jury has been told.
The police interview with Hanny Papanicolaou, 38, from January 2, 2019, was played before her NSW Supreme Court murder trial on Thursday.
Earlier that morning she jumped the back fence of Marjorie Welsh's inner western Sydney home on a day she was not scheduled to be cleaning.
Ms Welsh died six weeks later in hospital, but not before telling police "Hanny the Housekeeper" had viciously attacked her.
Papanicolaou said she arrived without her supplies to ask if she could do some work before the elderly woman turned violent, accusing her of stealing $50 and thrusting a knife at her.
She says ceramics that became embedded in Ms Welsh's skull "fell from the table" after she toppled to the ground still holding the knife, stabbing downwards into her own leg.
"I say I will call triple zero then she says 'no, you going to die, my daughter is a lawyer ... oh god, what is happening to me'," she says in the recording.
She says she "broke the (walking) stick" in half before wrestling the knife from Ms Welsh who then hit her with a magnifying glass.
"I stay 'stop, stop,' then .... she's just mad."
Papanicolaou says she was unaware Ms Welsh had been stabbed at least four times, but did see blood coming out of her nose, before running back to her car.
"Can you explain why you took the phone?" Senior Constable Rebecca Little asks, referring to Ms Welsh's home phone.
"I wanted to seek help," she says.
Detectives continually ask why she then dumped it in a bin along with the knife and a bloodied cloth, before discarding her own clothes in another street.
"I don't know," Papanicolaou mostly responds.
After telling detectives she has no money problems, she admits that she was gambling at Canterbury League Club on the poker machines from 9am that day.
She was left with $11 in her bank account, prosecutor Christopher Taylor earlier told the court.
She also denied suffering from any mental health problems at the time of her police interview.
Papanicolaou has since pleaded guilty to manslaughter, on the basis of substantial impairment due to an abnormality of the mind.
After Ms Welsh sounded her medical alarm she told attending officers that "Hanny" beat her with her own walking sticks, hurled ceramics down upon her and used a kitchen knife to repeatedly stab her in the chest and abdomen.
At the end of her police interview, Papanicolaou is asked if she thinks she went too far that day.
"Yeah. I feel so sorry," she says.
The trial continues.
