A Chinese man admitted to gardaí that he killed a Chinese student and said she made him "very, very crazy" by telling him "love stories" involving another man, a jury at the Central Criminal Court heard.
Mr Hua Yu Feng (27), Woodbrook Glen, Bray, Co Wicklow, has pleaded not guilty to the murder at Woodbrook Glen, on July 4th, 2003, of Ms Xiang Yi Wang (21), originally from Fuxing City, China.
Ms Xiang, known as "Linda", had been living with a Chinese family at The Grove, Woodbrook Glen.
Mr Patrick James McCarthy SC, prosecuting, read to the jury part of a statement the accused gave to gardaí after his arrest on July 13th, 2003.
"Did you kill Linda Wang?" Sgt Patrick Campbell asked the accused. "Yes, I did. Last Thursday night I killed her by knife in the garden," Mr Hua replied through an interpreter.
"Did you love Linda?" Sgt Campbell asked him. "Yes," he replied.
The court heard that Mr Hua had been trying to contact Ms Xiang on his mobile phone throughout the evening of July 3rd while he was drinking at a local pub in Bray.
The court heard how Mr Hua and Ms Xiang, who, according to the accused, had been boyfriend and girlfriend for 18 months, had been arguing for days prior to the killing because Linda had told him about another man.
"She told me she was seeing somebody. She told me some love stories. That made me very, very crazy, very angry," he said in the statement. "I told her if you loved me you wouldn't tell me that secret about that person."
He said he had tried to contact Linda at work that day to apologise for the quarrelling, but she was not there. He subsequently learned she was out to dinner with somebody.
Mr Hua, known as "Jackie", returned to his home "before closing time" and went into his kitchen and "got a cutting knife".
"What did you intend to do with the knife?" he was asked.
"I don't know, I just got very, very drunk and wanted it with me," he said.
Asked if he intended to harm Linda, he said: "No, I never meant to do that."
The court heard he then left his house with the knife to go to Linda's house, but he did not recall how he was carrying the knife.
"At that moment I got very, very drunk and I was mad. I just remember the stories she told me of that man," he said.
He said Ms Xiang went willingly with him when he called to her house late that night. When the two met, she asked him if he had seen a man hugging her on the road, he said.
"What part of the body did you stab her?" Sgt Campbell asked. "I don't know," Mr Hua replied.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Butler.