Witness: Murder victim ‘stabbed to pieces’

A Dublin man has told a murder trial that the accused stabbed the deceased “to pieces” in the ruin of an old church five years ago.

Simon Griffin was testifying at the Central Criminal Court in the trial of a 36-year-old charged with murdering a man by stabbing him over 100 times.

Criostóir MacCárthaigh, of An Gleann, Palmerstown, has pleaded not guilty to murdering David Whyte in Dublin between Sept 24 and 26, 2008.

Griffin testified yesterday that he had a few drinks in his flat in Phibsborough on the night of the killing. He said his neighbour, Mr MacCárthaigh, he left with others around 11pm.

Mr Griffin said he heard another friend calling Mr MacCárthaigh’s name and went outside to see why.

He said he saw the accused kneeling over a man, stabbing him with a knife.

He said the accused told him to hold the man while he opened his car van.

“He told me to help him put the man in the back of the van,” he said, adding that he did so.

He said he was told to go into the back of the van with this man.

“I wasn’t given a choice,” he said.

He said the accused then drove the van to Mill Lane in Palmerstown.

“I was told to bring him up into the field… to walk with the deceased,” he said, explaining that the man was not dead at this stage.

“We ended up at the church ruin. The man was stabbed to pieces. That’s literally it.”

He said the accused then told him to drive him to Mr MacCárthaigh’s mother’s house. He said the accused spent changed and washed blood off himself.

He said they later burned the van’s carpet.

Mr Griffin said he had pleaded guilty to impeding the murder probe and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in 2011.

Mr Hartnett put it to him that he was responsible for Mr Whyte’s murder.

“I wasn’t,” he replied.

The trial continues on Monday.