A man pleading not guilty to fatally stabbing a woman 37 times claimed yesterday he had only signed a confession because a police inspector promised him 10 packets of cigarettes and a plate of eggs and chips.
Saviour Mangion, 45, accused of the 1984 murder of 54-year-old Rosina Zammit in Safi, had signed a police statement in 2005 admitting he had killed the woman.
"I admitted to the crime because I wanted the cigarettes. I lose my mind if I don't have them," Mr Mangion told jurors yesterday.
"The inspector told me: 'If you admit, I'll give you 10 packets of cigarettes and eggs and chips', so I signed the statement. But I never did anything," he added.
Mr Mangion, of Żejtun, is also being charged with stealing about €466 in cash and items from Ms Zammit's house.
The woman had suffered multiple stab wounds and died at her Safi home. She sustained three cuts to her hands, three stab wounds to her back and 34 stab wounds on the front of her body, between the neck and the groin.
The police approached Mr Mangion in 2005 after they received confidential information that he had told fellow prison inmates he had been involved in the death of Ms Zammit 21 years earlier. He had signed two detailed police statements in the space of three days.
On Monday, Police Inspector Chris Pullicino, who had interrogated him, testified that the accused gave the police details of the scene of the crime which could only have been known to someone who was there at the time. One example was a power cut that occurred on the day.
But Mr Mangion insisted yesterday he did not spontaneously give the police certain details and accused Inspector Pullicino of having fed him the information. "The inspector told me the name of the victim and that she was stabbed many times. I didn't know these things," he said.
He denied identifying the victim's house and accused both the investigating officer and former Assistant Police Commissioner Emanuel Cassar of lying to him during interrogation. "The inspector told me where the house and her bedroom was. I never went there," he insisted.
Earlier this month, Mr Mangion claimed he was not mentally fit to stand trial but a jury panel decided otherwise.
Three psychologists, appointed on the request of defence counsel, testified yesterday that even though Mr Mangion suffered from chronic paranoid psychosis, his condition did not affect the truthfulness of the two statements he had given to the police.
Lawyer Leonard Caruana, from the Attorney General's office, argued that the two statements included certain details about Ms Zammit's death and lifestyle that could only have been known by Mr Mangion. These details revealed that the murder had been carefully planned. Mr Mangion could have easily changed the version of events when he gave the second statement.
"He watched her for a fortnight because he thought that Ms Zammit kept money in her house. He knew she went to Mass at 6.30 p.m. and waited for her to go home and then turned up outside the door with a long knife," Dr Caruana said.
Defence counsel Simon Micallef Stafrace pointed out that it was possible Mr Mangion made certain claims in his statement because they might have been suggested to him.
The prosecution had built the case around Mr Mangion's statement and did not double check everything, he said. For example, Mr Mangion's fingerprints were never found in the victim's house. Also, even though Mr Mangion said he dumped the knife in a reservoir, the police never found it, Dr Micallef Stafrace said.
Mr Mangion had said he used matches in Ms Zammit's house because there was no electricity. However, the police never found any spent matches in the house, just three packets of new matches.
The prosecution believed the three boxes of unused matches linked Mr Mangion to Ms Zammit's house. "But the fact that there were no burnt matches reveals there was another person in the house who didn't need matches because he knew the place well," Dr Micallef Stafrace argued.
Mr Mangion is already serving a 21-year-old jail term for the murder of his 74-year-old neighbour, Frenċ Cassar, of Żejtun, and the attempted murder of Mr Cassar's sister Ġuża on August 18, 1988.
Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono, presiding over the trial, yesterday started addressing the jurors and will continue today, after which the jury is expected to retire to deliberate.