A KILLER has admitted murdering a transgender woman in Droitwich after pleading guilty on the day his trial was due to begin.

Martin Saberi, 55, entered his guilty plea at Worcester Crown Court on Monday, more than two years after he killed Amy Griffiths in 2019.

The trial had been scheduled to go ahead in full, with a jury, but Saberi changed his plea to guilty before the trial could start.

He will be sentenced on March 11, also at Worcester Crown Court.

The trial had looked uncertain to get underway as there was a delay of more than four hours.

It had been scheduled to begin at 10am, but continued technical errors meant no progress was made until around 2.20pm.

There had been discussions about adjourning the start of the trial until Tuesday due to a problem establishing a video link to the courtroom.

Eventually a workaround was found, and Saberi's guilty plea meant the jury was no longer needed.

Ms Griffiths was murdered between January 11 and January 14, 2019.

Later that month, Saberi, then 53, was charged with her murder.

Ms Griffiths was described as a "hero" in the local LGBT+ community by friends.

Her body was found in Chalverton Court, on January 14, 2019, with police saying she had suffered head and throat injuries.

At the time, friends paid tribute to Ms Griffiths, saying she was a "lovely person with a good sense of humour".

The trial had due to get underway back in 2019, but this was delayed due to disruption in Worcester's courts caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Saberi, previously of Brackley Close, Wallington, Surrey, had originally appeared in Crown Court in 2019 where he denied killing Ms Griffiths in Chalverton Close, Droitwich.

The case was then adjourned in October 2019 for a forensics report before being pushed back to February 1, this year.

From there, it was again pushed back to February 15.

When he was initially charged, Saberi was arrested by police officers in Hackney, London.

He refused to leave the cell when he appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Court that week, so the initial hearing was carried out in his absence.