The wife of Sabina Nessa’s killer is wracked with guilt after her husband battered the primary school teacher to death with a red road sign, a friend has said.
Ionela Selamaj had been married to Koci Selamaj for three years when he attacked Ms Nessa as she walked to a pub in Kidbrooke, south-east London, in September.
Domino’s driver Selamaj pleaded guilty to Ms Nessa’s murder on Friday at the Old Bailey in what is thought to have been a sexually motivated attack.
Ionela was horrified by her husband’s crime and attended a vigil for Ms Nessa less than three weeks after her murder in Eastbourne.
She was seen sobbing and told a friend that it would have made more sense if Selamaj had killed her.
A friend told the Daily Mail: “We met by accident at the vigil. She tapped me on the shoulder and started sobbing and I hugged her. She cried all evening, until late at night, when we went by the sea and threw flowers in the water.
“She kept saying she doesn’t understand what he had against Sabina and that it would have made more sense if he’d killed her — not Sabina.”
Ionela and Selamaj married after a whirlwind romance but he became violent towards her and she had decided to leave him in the weeks before he killed Ms Nessa.
“She told us that in the past months he became violent,” the friend said.
“He tried to strangle her three times. One day he came home from work and without saying anything he just came at her and strangled her. She thought she was going to die. But something happened and he stopped.”
On the day he killed Ms Nessa, Selamaj booked a room in the hotel where Ionela worked as a cleaner and arranged to meet up with her.
She did not know he was staying in the hotel and turned him down when he asked her for sex.
“He asked her to meet him in the parking lot, without mentioning that he had checked in at the same hotel she works in,” a friend said.
“He proposed sex to her, she said no, and she went back into the hotel. She told me he went back to his room, without her knowing, and stayed there for a while then he went to London.
“He stayed on the third floor, while she was working on the second floor. She only found out he was there later when her boss told her.”
Selamaj drove to London where he lay in wait for Ms Nessa, a stranger he had never met, before pouncing on her and hitting her 34 times.
The Albanian national then went on to strangle her in the undergrowth before driving back to the hotel and spending the night.
Selamaj went nine days before being arrested by police, His wife had no idea he was being hunted.
Friends now say Ionela is crippled with guilt for not having gone to the police while Ms Nessa was still alive.
Her friend said: “She feels very ashamed she is the wife of a murderer and she is afraid to leave her room.”
