A Belgian woman has been arrested and charged with murdering her Dutch boyfriend and keeping his body in a freezer for a year, Belgian paper Het Laatste Nieuws reports.

The 41-year-old woman was arrested on Monday in connection with the murder, which took place in May 2014 in the town of Gits. The woman is said to have undergone years of abuse from the man who was an alcoholic.

Eventually she snapped, drugged him with sleeping pills and strangled him, Het Laatste Nieuws says.

The paper says the woman came up with all sorts of excuses to explain where her partner, named as Jacob ‘Jaap’ van den Blink (59), had gone over the past year. Eventually police found the body in the locked freezer. It is unclear how they came to check on his disappearance, the paper says

‘My client did not mean to kill him,’ her lawyer told a court in Belgium. ‘She wanted him out of her house to protect herself and her young daughter.’