The stark cold reality of a bloody murder was yesterday laid bare to jurors as the autopsy pictures of the Gozitan traffic warden killed over excess parking tickets were projected on a large screen in the court room.

The most startling evidence was given by an emergency doctor, Patrick Sciberras, who said he was first told Fortunata Spiteri, 47, was involved in a car accident, however, when he unfastened her belt, her intestines fell out of a wound that made it pretty clear it was no accident.

The gruesome photographs were among the last pieces of evidence to be produced in the trial by jury of bus driver Ġanni Attard, 64, who is pleading not guilty to murdering Mrs Spiteri on August 10, 2001.

The victim was stabbed five times, the fatal blows being the one which almost severed her aorta and another which left another vein, the vena cava, also badly damaged, pathologists, Marie Therese Camilleri, Bridgette Ellul and Michael Refalo, testified.

Mrs Spiteri died from massive internal blood loss, forensic pathologist Mario Scerri later said.

At the start of the closing arguments, defence lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace told jurors what the prosecution had said about his client. Confessing to the murder in his police statement was not an admission but an explanation of how he had nothing to do with it. His client had merely given a lift to the mastermind, Benny Attard, who was jailed last year after he killed the warden. His client had ended up embroiled in a murder.

The lawyer honed in on another point the prosecution raised, the alleged excessive number of tickets issued by the warden. He asked the juror: “Doesn’t everyone complain about wardens? There was nothing unusual about the disagreement on the matter between the victim and the accused, he added.

“My client was afraid, fearing for his life after being threatened by Mr Attard not to say a word about the murder he had just witnessed,” Dr Micallef Stafrace said.

He said another crucial point was how Mr Attard had said his client had met him in the morning and they agreed they would meet in the evening to kill the warden. There were witnesses to disprove this.

Dr Micallef Stafrace summoned, a slaughterer, Joseph Sciberras, who said that in August 2001, and more specifically around the 10th, he had sold meat to the accused from his own shop in Malta in the morning. So he could not have met the accused in the morning.

Another witness, the wife of the accused, Rita, said that because her husband was illiterate she would keep a diary of his movements so in the event he got a parking ticket she would know where he was at the time and could verify it. She handed over a shabby diary she said contained entries for different days of the week and which described her husband’s movements, more specifically on the day in question when, according to the diary, he was in Malta.

Lawyer Lara Lanfranco, from the Attorney General’s Office, asked Mrs Attard if she was with the accused when he was allegedly in Malta or did she simply jot down what he told her.

The witness said she wrote down what he told her to write.

Dr Lanfranco will this morning begin her own address to the jurors who are expected to retire to deliberate by tomorrow afternoon.