A Russian man found a human skull while planting potatoes only for his wife to reveal it was the remains of her first husband whom she killed and buried 20 years ago.

The 60-year-old woman calmly explained ‘don’t worry – it’s my first husband’ after the grim discovery in the garden of her home in Luzino, a village in the Omsk region of Siberia in Russia.

She confessed to the killing before telling her new partner to ‘bury the remains again, forget about it, and we won’t tell the police.’

However, the husband ignored the instructions and told police officers.

She dismembered the man, aged 52, and buried him in her potato garden. Then she pretended that he had gone to work and never come home.

The woman’s new husband, who also found other bones ignored her demands and went to police to report the crime.

The unnamed woman confessed to killing her husband, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes.

In a crime reconstruction she showed how she dismembered her husband with an axe.

Police dug out the vegetable garden and found other bones. A judge put the woman under house arrest during the criminal investigation.

She faces a charge of wilful killing with a maximum penalty of ten years in prison.