Russian man accidentally digs up bones of partner's murdered ex

Moscow: A Russian man digging a vegetable patch in Siberia found human bones that turned out to be those of his partner's ex-boyfriend, whom she murdered 21 years ago, investigators said Tuesday.

Investigators opened a murder probe after the unnamed man found the bones in his partner's garden in the village of Luzino, around 2,200 kilometres east of Moscow, the regional Investigative Committee said in a statement.

"The villager, while digging over the earth in the vegetable patch to plant potatoes found human bones and a skull," investigators said.

They posted a photo of bones including what appears to be a human jaw bone.

The man's 60-year-old partner then "explained that in 1997 during an argument she hit her previous 52-year-old live-in lover several times on the head with an axe," after which she dismembered the body and buried it in her vegetable patch, investigators said.

The woman told her neighbours that her partner had gone away to work and no one came to look for him.

She is now under a travel ban pending further investigation.

Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported that the woman had freely confessed the crime to her current partner but asked him not to go to the police. Nevertheless, he did so.

It reported that her crime would not fall under any statute of limitations.