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ELIZABETH RUDAVSKY killed her abusive lover in self-defence - then found he was actually a woman.

The 26-year-old had fallen for Angelo Heddington over a shared love of horses when they met in 2002, leaving her boyfriend Andy to move in with him.

Their whirlwind romance was quickly followed by a wedding and Elizabeth becoming pregnant.

But the relationship had already become violent, with Angelo beating her from a week after they moved in together.

At a garden party to surprise friends with the news of their wedding, Liz had a black eye. Soon afterwards she was admitted to hospital with life-threatening injuries, which she blamed on a riding accident.

The couple moved an hour away from their friends and family, setting up home in Chatham, with friends already worried at Angelo's possessive behaviour and the way Elizabeth had been withdrawing from her social life and losing weight.

On September 21, 2002, Elizabeth stabbed Angelo with a 12-inch butcher knife. When police found her trying to stop the bleeding, she blamed her husband's injury on a burglar.

But he was still conscious and yelled: “She stabbed me! My wife!”

Elizabeth was arrested and charged with murder after Angelo died on the operating table.

Only then did Elizabeth learn her husband's name was actually Angela - and he was a woman wearing a prosthetic penis under his clothes.

Police struggled to understand how Elizabeth could have an intimate relationship without knowing Angelo’s biological sex.

She told them she’d never seen Angelo “bare” in the light after he claimed he was having reconstructive surgery after a crazy ex-girlfriend had burned him.

She also told police of Angelo's abuse, telling them how he with a horse crop, locked up her food to force her to lose weight, made her order child’s portions in restaurants and forced her to drink large amounts of water and then beat her for urinating.

Her weight dropped from 180 pounds to less than 100. She says the time she was hospitalised in Chatham she was violated with a metal pipe.

Psychologist and domestic abuse expert Dr. Paul G Jaffe was brought in by police and had sessions over seven months, coming to the conclusion she had “prisoner of war” syndrome – withdrawal and utter hopelessness as a reaction to imprisonment.

During these sessions she revealed the pair had never married - and she was never pregnant. She explained: “It was all a hoax. Angelo wanted me to wear a ring so he could say I was all his.”

Over the course of the investigation, police learned Angelo had a history of abuse and stalking in at least three past relationships.

The trial, held in April 2003, lasted just one day. It heard how on the night Angelo died, Elizabeth fought back for the first time, evading his attempts to choke her then taking a knife and trying to escape through the back door. When Angelo caught her, she stabbed him in the stomach.

Evidence from the police investigation supported Elizabeth’s allegations of terrible abuse and torture, with her DNA on the household items turned to weapons in his attacks. Elizabeth explained she couldn’t leave Angelo because he threatened to hurt her family.

Prosecution and police investigators agreed Elizabeth's actions were in self-defence and the murder charges were dropped. Even Angelo's mother tells the local newspaper: “Yes, she killed out daughter. But really, in her eyes, what choice did she have?”

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