THE case of Michael Jachimowicz, accused of killing his elderly father, Hierinom, and burying him in the back garden of his Borehamwood home, continues.

In the witness box Michael Jachimowicz told the jury of his father's poor health in the last years of his life.

He said the old man had fought stomach cancer and suffered heart problems.

The son told the court his father also suffered from kidney disease and suffered many falls around the house which led to cuts and bruises and in 2004, a broken collar bone.

He said he was his father's carer and often had to ring for the doctor for him, which would prompt a visit from a Hertfordshire Community Health Service nurse.

Mr Jachimowicz said by March of 2005 his father was in a "steady decline" and didn't want to eat and was sleeping constantly.

He said he put his father to bed in the lounge of their home on the evening of Saturday March 12 and he said he went to bed himself around 9.30 to 10pm.

The next morning he said he got up and found his father laying in the bed with his eyes open.

"I went over and looked at him and he was slightly warm and not breathing."

He added "There was no life, no breathing, no pulse, nothing. I realised he had died in the night. There was not a pained expression on his face and that was of some comfort to me.

The son told the court he was "numb with shock" and he then told the jury "I was at a crossroads. Do I phone the doctor or bury him in the garden because I made a promise to him, some years ago that if he died I would bury him in the garden."

Asked how the promise had come about, Mr Jachimowicz explained that when his mother had died in 1999 she had been buried in a grave at the Gunnersbury Cemetry in West London.

He said she had been laid to rest in a Polish section of the cemetery in a spot surrounded by flowering cherry trees.

"It was like a little oasis, quite beautiful, he told the court" adding that it was the intention at the time that is father would also be buried there.

But he said the spot was ruined a few years later when the cherry trees were cut down.

Asked by his barrister, Navjot Sidhu, what had been the reaction of is father to the chopping down of the trees, Mr Jachimowicz replied "He was furious and shook his head and said when I die don't throw me on this rubbish heap and walked away. He was disgusted"

Later he said his father told him one day when they were sitting in their back garden that it was here he wished to be buried.

He described their garden as very beautiful and had been created by the family over 40 years.

Mr Jachimowicz then told the jury how on that Sunday, having found his father was dead, he set about burying him in their back garden.

"I gave a pledge and I had to meet that. If I didn't meet that pledge, then to my dying day I would not have felt comfortable in my heart.."

He said he measured out the grave and dug it out adding "It was the most peaceful spot in the garden and the most private too"

The son told the court the grave was three feet deep and he lined it with tarpaulin.

That evening he said he carried his father from the lounge and out into the garden and "very carefully" put him in the grave.

He told the court "I wanted to leave a tribute to him for whoever found him in years to come. I went back into the house and wrote a a tribute to him from me." 

  Mr Jachimowicz said when he placed his father in the grave he made sure he was facing east towards "his beloved Poland."

He said he wrapped his father's body in the tarpaulin and then filled in the grave using bags of peat.