Infidelity was again the motive of the murder of Ġorġa Micallef.

On May 13, 1939, at about 5.30pm, thirty-nine-year-old Pawlu Micallef hurriedly entered the Ħamrun police station and reported that he had just stabbed his wife, Ġorġa, at their house in Fleur-de-Lys Road, Birkirkara. Micallef also told the police that his wife had been unfaithful to him and he claimed that a police inspector, a bachelor, was involved in this love affair.

Before he committed the crime, Micallef went to see his brother-in-law to complain about Ġorġa’s infidelity and her brother promised he would do his utmost to reconcile the couple.

Indeed, Ġorġa’s brother spoke to his sister in the presence of her husband. After the meeting he left their house for a few minutes, and when he returned, he saw Micallef speeding in his car towards Valletta. Micallef was, in fact, proceeding to the police station after he had stabbed his wife in the chest.

Ġorġa was still alive when her brother arrived and he helped her to bed and called the police. She was later conveyed to hospital where she died some time later. In a statement in articolo mortis she tried to exonerate her husband and attributed the stabbing to her taunts and her provocation. She also said they were deeply in love.

In spite of this declaration, Micallef was charged with voluntary homicide. Meanwhile, Micallef was sent to the mental hospital as he pleaded insanity.

Three court experts studied his case and monitored his behaviour for a period of time. In their report the court experts concluded that at the time of the commission of the crime Micallef was insane. The court ruled, however, that the issue had to be debated in court and decided by a panel of jurors.

After hearing the experts’ testimony, the jury decided by a verdict of six votes for and three against that the accused was insane at the time of the commission of the crime and also at the time of the trial. Micallef was confined to Mount Carmel Hospital, Attard.

During the preliminary court proceedings, members of the Micallef’s family gave evidence that the accused had been complaining that his wife would neither cook for him nor wash his clothes. Some witnesses said that Ġorġa started to use lipstick whereas previously she associated lipstick with prostitutes. It was also alleged that the woman was spending a lot of time on the roof where she met her lover. It was also said that the deceased used to taunt her husband about his lack of sexual drive.

A neighbour of the Micallef family also testified in court that the inspector was having a house built near the Micallefs’ house and often used to drive to the construction site ostensibly to monitor the work in progress on the house. A witness also testified that on one occasion he saw the inspector banging three times on the door of the Micallefs, and when some moments later Ġorġa appeared half-dressed in the balcony, her husband was seen dragging her inside.

In May 1945, Ġużeppi Farrugia killed his wife with an axe after a heated argument. Court experts declared that Farrugia was insane at the time of the murder and he was sent to the mental hospital.

In October of the same year, Joseph Connell was found guilty as an accomplice in his wife’s murder and he was sentenced to death. Early in the morning of September 11, 1944, the police were informed that a corpse had been seen floating beneath St Leonard Fortress, limits of Xgħajra, in the locality known as Ġolf it-Tafal. When the body was recovered from the sea it was identified as that of Carmela Connell, aged 37, who was married to police constable Connell.

When the case was reported in the press, Carmelo Mercieca informed the police that three weeks before he had been approached by Connell who told him he was looking for a hitman. Mercieca said he had met Connell near the Marsa slaughter house and during their first meeting he left Connell without a reply and told him he was going to think about it. Mercieca added that after a fortnight Connell called at his house and asked him to meet him near the petrol station in Birżebbuġa the following morning.

On March 13, 1972, in Tarxien, a man planted a bomb on the roof of his residence and his wife was killed while hanging clothes

According to Mercieca’s statement, this meeting was held on August 27, 1944, and Connell told Mercieca he wanted to get rid of a woman and that he was ready to pay £70 for the job. Later, Mercieca and Connell met at the latter’s house and Mercieca was told him it was his (Connell’s) wife he wanted dead. It was alleged that Connell also told Mercieca to take Carmela on the Cospicua bastions on the pretext that he would later join them after acquiring a box of stolen jewellery. According to this plan, after waiting for some time, Mercieca had to push Carmela over the bastions.

When the police continued with their inquiries it transpired that before Carmela’s death, Connell had been seen in the company of his brother, John, and Edward Burnell. When questioned by the police about Carmela’s death, John Connell made a statement, admitting that when Mercieca failed to do the job, his brother enlisted him to kill Carmela.

According to John Connell, Carmela was pushed over the cliff of Ġolf it-Tafal. John Connell also implicated Burnell in the crime. When questioned by the police, Burnell said that on September 10 he had met Carmela at Bir-id-Deheb from where they both walked to Żabbar and were eventually joined by John Connell.

Burnell added that from Żabbar they all walked to Xgħajra and made for Ġolf it-Tafal. Once more, Carmela was told that her husband was coming on a boat with stolen objects. After waiting for some time in the dark, they could see a boat drawing near but this was pure coincidence as Carmela’s husband was not on the boat. According to Burnell, at this moment the two men invited Carmela to come up to them, saying that her husband was coming and as she reached the edge of the cliff, she was pushed into the sea.

The police charged John Connell and Burnell with the murder of Carmela Connell, and Joseph Connell was charged as an accomplice. The court was presided over by Sir George Borg, assisted by Judges E. Ganado and William Harding. Joseph Connell was defended by Dr Joseph Flores.

The jury returned with verdict a unanimous ‘guilty’ verdict for the three accused and they were all sentenced to death. After the trial, Dr Flores gave notice of appeal before the judicial committee of the Privy Council on behalf of Joseph Connell. According to Dr Flores, the summing up of the Chief Justice was seriously flawed as the accused had been deprived of his right to a fair trial. The defence claimed that a substantial miscarriage of justice had been committed. In support of these contentions, Dr Flores submitted four main grounds for opposition to the Chief Justice’s decisions.

In his submissions to the Privy Council, Dr Flores also mentioned that, addressing the jury, the Chief Justice had made reference to the illicit relationship Joseph Connell had with a woman called Marie from Cospicua.

According to Dr Flores, “all these are circumstances you cannot neglect in considering whether there was a motive which induced Joseph Connell to commit the crime which he commissioned others to perpetrate”.

The judicial committee that heard the appeal was composed of Lord Thankerton, Lord Uthwatt, Lord Du Parq, Sir Madhavan Nair and Sir John Beaumont.

The report, dated March 5, 1947, said that in the committee’s opinion there were sufficient grounds for the conviction to be overturned and that there should be no order for a new trial.

After the judgement of the Privy Council, Joseph Connell was set free. Moreover, the Governor of Malta Sir Francis Douglas reprieved John Connell and Burnell, and they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1946, Police Constable Karmenu Vella, 45, was involved in a vicious love triangle murder after he fell in love with a 34-year-old widow, Kalċidonja Abdilla from Qrendi, the village where constable Vella was posted.

Late in the evening of November 22, 1946, Vella reported that his wife, Lela, 42, had not returned home in Marsa. Vella said that, at his request, she visited him at Qrendi police station but at about 1pm she went for a walk in the village and did not return.

The constable had been engaged to Lela while she was still staying in an orphanage. Lela had been living at the orphanage since she was four.

On November 24 at about noon, while two boys were strolling along St Matthew Lane, commonly known by the inhabitants of Qrendi as L-Isqaq tal-Bottijiet, they found the corpse of Lela Vella. The post-mortem examination revealed that Vella had been dead about two days and that she died as a result of grievous head injuries after being hit by a hard object.

In September 1978, a man killed his wife in Paola and committed suicide by jumping from the roof of his relatives’ residence in Cospicua

Police enquiries revealed that some boys who were in the fields adjacent to the lane where the corpse had been found, saw Abdilla walking behind another woman whom they did not know. The boys, however, gave the police a graphic description of the unknown woman and gave details of the clothes she was wearing.

Eventually, Abdilla was charged with homicide and her trial began on May 5, 1947. During her testimony, the accused mentioned how she came to know Karmenu Vella and admitted that there was a love affair between them. The accused also admitted that she had thrown a stone at the deceased but insisted that it was a small stone. She claimed that she just wanted to frighten Lela so that she would go and tell her husband about the matter. Abdilla said she had done so although she knew there were some boys watching.

During Abdilla’s trial the prosecution went along with the court’s ruling and did not make reference to Karmenu Vella’s statement. Moreover, Dr Flores, on behalf of the defence, reminded the jury that Abdilla was accused of murder, and the fact that she committed adultery, a crime in 1946, did not fall within the cognisance of the court. In fact, the accused was pregnant and gave birth to a child some weeks before the trial while she was detained in prison.

The accused was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment. Then, on December 2, 1947, the trial of Karmenu Vella began after the plea of insanity was dismissed by Dr Vincent Xerri, who acted as defence. Vella was charged as an accomplice in the crime.

During Vella’s trial Kalċidonja was summoned as a witness. In her testimony she repeated what she had said during her trial. The accused also gave his version of the love affair and the murder of his wife. He was found guilty by eight votes against one and received a life sentence.

Another guilty verdict overturned by the judicial committee of the Privy Council was that of Malcolm Stewart Broadhurst . In October 1961, Broadhurst was found guilty of the willful murder of his wife Jean, and he was given a 15-year prison sentence. However, the Privy Council acquitted Broadhurst on a point of law.

Then, in 1967, a woman was battered to death by her husband who had just been released from Mount Carmel Hospital.

The 1970s marked an increase in such crimes. On March 13, 1972, in Tarxien, a man planted a bomb on the roof of his residence and his wife was killed while hanging clothes. The husband was sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

In September 1973, a man from Żurrieq was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment after murdering his wife. Then, in September 1978, a man killed his wife in Paola and committed suicide by jumping from the roof of his relatives’ residence in Cospicua. It was the first case in Malta of an uxoricide followed by suicide of the perpetrator.

Since 1980 there were 21 other cases of wife (or former wife) killings. Prison sentences meted out in the Criminal Court ranged from four to 30 years. There were four cases where the accused was found insane at the time of the commission of the crime. In four other cases the husband committed suicide after the crime.

(Concluded)