An international student accused of murdering a woman and hiding her body in a tool box for almost a year is set to give evidence.

Yang Zhao, aged 30, is set to testify in his own defense on Wednesday after entering a plea of not guilty to the murder of 29-year-old Qiong Yan in September 2020 at their apartment in inner-Brisbane.

However, he has admitted guilt to interfering with Yan’s corpse, which was discovered hidden in a large toolbox on the balcony of their Hamilton unit approximately 10 months following her supposed murder.

The jury has previously only heard from Zhao via a recorded phone call with a detective and videos of his two police interviews in July 2021.

Crown prosecutor Chris Cook previously informed the Supreme Court jury of his intention to argue that Zhao sent over 2000 text messages following Yan’s death and impersonated her to fraudulently extract large sums of money from her mother’s accounts.

The prosecution has accused Zhao of killing Yan by either hitting her on the head with a metal gas canister or strangling her, then placing her in a “body box”, based on his own statements to police.

Defence barrister Andrew Hoare at the start of the trial asked the jury to consider whether Zhao had an accurate recollection of events when he spoke to detectives.

The jury heard evidence from forensic pathologist Beng Ong, who performed an autopsy on Yan.

“A cause of death cannot be ascertained due to the decomposed state of remains,” he said.

A CT scan of the body showed a cartilage fracture around her throat that could have been caused by strangulation or decomposition, the jury heard.

During cross-examination by Hoare, Ong said Yan had a “defect” on her forehead that could have been caused by blunt force trauma or by decomposition.

Ong said he would expect to find broken bones around Yan’s voice box if she had been strangled but those injuries were not present.