Ms Dokhotaru, 34, was killed in her 22nd-floor apartment in southwest Sydney on the night of May 26, 2023.
Her ex-boyfriend Danny Zayat is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to her murder.
The 30-year-old is accused of inflicting one or more blows to Ms Dokhotaru's head, possibly in combination with a push that caused her to fall.
The jury was shown CCTV footage of Zayat arriving at his ex-partner's apartment the day after her death alongside his mother.
Jamile Zayat testified through an interpreter that she had gone to the apartment with her husband, but corrected herself after seeing the footage.
She said they rang the doorbell but received no reply, and the footage shows they left after a few minutes waiting outside.
The jury has been told Zayat returned later that night and found Ms Dokhotaru's body, telling triple-zero operators it looked "like she's been dead for a while".
Ms Zayat denied witnessing arguments between her son and Ms Dokhotaru - also known as Tanya - in 2022.
But weeks before she was killed, Ms Dokhotaru told a friend about a fight she had with Zayat after he went through her phone and saw her messages with other men.
He dragged her by her hair, spat at her "like 20 times", threw her phone, and threatened to kill her, according to a text she sent to her friend Arian Monchizada.
"I was fighting him off. I tried calling the cops but he said he'll kill me if I do," she wrote on April 13.
"It was absolute hell. My body is in shock. My mind is too."
In the messages read out in court, Ms Dokhotaru confided that she felt "so humiliated and violated" after the alleged assault and she was struggling to process it.
Weeks later, she told Ms Monchizada that Zayat attacked her again after claiming she had been messaging his friend.
"He strangled me so bad (sic), my throat is so bruised and swollen, I can barely breathe," Ms Dokhotaru texted on May 1.
On Monday Ms Dokhotaru's parents who live in Canada testified about Zayat's regular abusive phone calls to their daughter during a visit in 2022.
The prosecution alleges Zayat had a tendency to be violent and abusive towards his partner during their dysfunctional relationship and after they split up.
An interim two-year apprehended domestic violence order was taken out in a local court in May 2022 to protect Ms Dokhotaru, the jury was told.
But Zayat rejected claims he was violent towards Ms Dokhotaru or had anything to do with her death, his lawyer told the jury.
Defence barrister Madeleine Avenell SC said her client did not deny he had been in a "volatile and dysfunctional" relationship with Ms Dokhotaru, but he didn't kill her.
The trial continues on Friday.
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