‘Like putting together broken glass’: How Tatiana’s fairytale descended into fatal violence

Tatiana Dokhotaru’s murderer Danny Zayat showered her with compliments after each fit of rage, expressing admiration of her kindness and pure heart.

The 30-year-old killer would weaponise this praise to lure her back into his brutal cycle of abuse before eventually murdering the 34-year-old inside her 22nd-floor apartment in Liverpool in Sydney’s south-west.

In Dokhotaru’s last moments, on the night of May 26, 2023, he cut off her desperate Triple Zero call for help and threw her phone off her balcony. She was never heard from again.

On Thursday, after a 14-day NSW Supreme Court trial and nearly four days of deliberations, a jury found Zayat guilty of murder.

Zayat sat emotionless as the verdict was read out, but minutes later, hung his head.

Zayat killed Dokhotaru during the hour he was in her unit, between 10.35pm and 11.40pm, bashing her and stealing her money, following the abruptly ended emergency call in which Dokhotaru said Zayat was “trying to kill” her. She died from a brain bleed caused by blunt-force head trauma.

The jury rejected the defence’s suggestion that she died by an accidental fall while affected by alcohol and medication.

They reached a majority verdict, meaning only 11 of the 12 needed to agree, after they were earlier unable to make a unanimous decision.

Zayat had pleaded not guilty to murder and the alternative count of manslaughter.

Fairytale descends into violence

Russian-born Dokhotaru moved to Australia alone in 2011, having spent her teenage years in Canada with her family.

She met Zayat in 2017, describing him to a friend as “the love of her life”.

However, their fairytale soon devolved into an explosive, dysfunctional and violent relationship.

Dokhotaru would suffer his manipulative pattern of abuse until she “breaks from it, takes a step back, and then gives it another go”, Crown prosecutor Alex Morris told the court.

Friends witnessed Zayat punch and push Dokhotaru outside a restaurant in 2021.

She once texted a friend that Zayat “went crazy” and strangled her, spat on her and threatened to kill her after discovering she had messaged another man. After another bashing, she texted that her throat was “so bruised and swollen” she could “barely breathe”. One night, she fell asleep with a “birthday bruise”.

‘Like putting together broken glass’

Zayat’s words of love and admiration following each violent outburst, such as praising her “pure heart” and kindness, were described by Morris as her “Achilles heel” that he exploited to keep her trapped.

Text messages offered an insight into their minds, he said.

A day after Zayat dragged Dokhotaru by the hair and spat on her, he texted: “I can’t get it out of my head, I’m truly sorry. I’m sick of all this, I just want to be a family.”

She said their relationship was “like putting together broken glass – you can glue it back together, but it will never be fully fixed”.

“I’m broken right now, and importantly, I’ve never been so destroyed by a human being in my whole life. I’ve loved you so, so much for way too long, and now I’m suffocating because of it,” she wrote.

Zayat said they kept “getting brought back together” and he knew how she still felt about him, “despite what has happened”.

During a period of reconciliation, the pair discussed plans to move to Dubai. Dokhotaru told Zayat about the money she’d saved from her luxury goods business and sent him a photo of a shoebox full of $100 bills, messaging: “Let’s build an empire”.

The Crown argued Zayat used this knowledge to steal cash from her apartment on the night of the murder.

In November 2022, the pair moved out of a rural property in far western Sydney as their relationship crumbled yet again and Dokhotaru moved into the Liverpool apartment.

Turbulent, devastating final days

The relationship was at rock bottom in Dokhotaru’s final weeks; they were separated but continued dysfunctional contact as the violence against Dokhotaru continued to escalate.

One month before her death, she told multiple people he dragged her by her hair and spat at her “like 20 times” and “said he was going to kill me”.

“I said he was going to call the cops and he said he’d kill me if I did,” she wrote.

One week before her death, Zayat seriously injured Dokhotaru after he picked her up from the airport upon her return from Thailand and discovered she then spent that night with another man.

This was a pivotal moment that “set off a chain of events” leading to her death, Morris said.

A jealous Zayat severely bashed her several times in her final days, once resulting in broken ribs that required hospitalisation. Dokhotaru told friends she was in a car accident or fell while cleaning.

The Crown submitted that “the nature of their relationship was volatile, dysfunctional and at a real low, including in the weeks and days prior to the death.”

Despite an apprehended domestic violence order (ADVO) being in place, Zayat slept at Dokhotaru’s apartment for the last few nights of her life.

On her final night, Dokhotaru shared wine with a friend at her apartment and texted Zayat, saying she missed him and was in pain that was caused by his inflicted injuries.

Zayat arrived at her apartment at 10.34pm. The trial centred on the hour that followed, before CCTV captured him leaving at 11.40pm.

Neighbours heard banging and shouting.

The Crown argued Zayat took her phone during her desperate call in which she said “my ex-boyfriend is here and he’s trying to kill me”, threw it off the balcony, and inflicted one or more fatal blows to her head – possibly in combination with a fall.

Emergency services went to the building, but had been told no unit number. They did not arrive until 8pm the next night, when Zayat was let inside the unit by another resident and called Triple Zero, telling them he found Dokhotaru injured, that she’d recently been taking “pills” and had been depressed.

Paramedics confirmed that Dokhotaru was dead.

A post-mortem concluded the cause was blunt-force head trauma. Doctors said the brain bleed was caused by one or a combination of injuries, including cuts to the left frontal scalp and lip and a bruised right cheek.

Crown argued ‘murder’; defence suggested ‘accidental death’

Defence barrister Madeleine Avenell, SC, suggested Dokhotaru could have died from an accidental fall, with tests revealing a “mixture of substances in her blood”, including alcohol, cannabis, diazepanes, opiates and antihistamine.

She said that while the substances were found in “low or therapeutic doses”, combined, they could cause drowsiness, reduced coordination, staggering movements and “less ability to protect herself from injury”.

Zayat will face sentence submissions on December 19.

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