In her opening address to the jury, Crown counsel Marie Grills said a pathologist would give evidence the pattern of 216 wounds inflicted on Miss Elliott indicated ''a persistent, focussed and determined attack''.
• Weatherston admits manslaughter
Mrs Grills said 33-year-old Weatherston took the knife with him when he visited 22-year-old Miss Elliott's Dunedin home on January 9, 2008.
The knife was found broken and covered in blood after the attack in which Miss Elliott was stabbed or cut 216 times. A pair of scissors was also found bent and bloodstained in the room.
The Crown said the clusters of wounds on her body related to areas of her attractiveness.
"Many wounds were directed at disfiguring her body."
"It is the crown case that the accused not only intended to kill Sophie Elliott but mutilate features of her beauty and did so in a calm, collected, and focused way," said Mrs Grills.
The first police officer to arrive at the Elliott home spoke to Weatherston in the dead woman's bedroom and asked what he had done, to which Weatherston replied, in a calm and normal tone ''I killed her''.
When the officer asked him why, Weatherston said it was because of ''the emotional pain she has caused me over the past year," Mrs Grills told the jurors.
She outlined the background to the case and the relationship which had developed between the pair during 2007 when both were involved with the University of Otago economics department. Weatherston was a lecturer and was finishing his PhD when the relationship began about June 2007. He was taking one of Miss Elliott's papers and, because of a possible conflict of interests, another person marked her work on that paper.
Sophie described the relationship to various friends and also to Miss Elliott's mother as being ''up and down'', sometimes ''all on'' then ''all off'', Mrs Grills said. It was effectively over by mid-December although there was still some contact between the two, including an incident in late December when Miss Elliott went to the accused's flat to give him an album of photos she had taken at his graduation.
He became amorous despite the fact they had both discussed the relationship being over and suggested they go to bedroom ''for old times sake''. He grabbed Miss Elliott, threw her on the bed, and straddled her. She was scared, screamed and struggled and managed to get away.
But before she left, he said he wished she was dead, that she had ruined his chances of getting a permanent lecturing job he had applied for and he was ''giving all his hate'' to her.
In a brief opening statement for the defence, Judith Ablett-Kerr QC told the jury the issue they had to decide was whether the accused was a cold-blooded, premeditated killer as the Crown said.
''Or is he a man who as a result of provocation, lost the power of self control when he committed this terrible act''.
The defence says he was provoked by the emotional pain of a torrid and tumultuous relationship he had experienced with Miss Elliott and which he was ill-equipped to deal with because of his own unique personality makeup.
"It intruded not only on his personal life, but his professional life as well. It tragically culminated in the horrific events of January 9 last year," Mrs Ablett-Kerr said.
The defence would say that Miss Elliott had attacked him with a pair of scissors and he had responded, losing the power of self-control, she added. - Additional reporting by NZPA.
- Read the full report in tomorrow's Otago Daily Times
