Tickets were booked for Lithuania return

Murdered mum Jolanta Lubiene had her tickets booked to return permanently to Lithuania in July last year, her sister said yesterday.

But the bodies of the 27-year-old along with her daughter Enrika, aged 8, were found at her Kerry home weeks before the planned departure.

Aurimas Andruska, aged 27 and a forestry worker with an address at Ardmoniel Heights, Killorglin has denied a double murder charge of the mother and child at Langford Downs, Killorglin, on a date unknown between June 15 and June 17, 2013.

Witness Kristina Kuleviciene said all her siblings had at one stage lived in Ireland. Her sister, she said, had moved here in 2007 to be with her husband Marius Lubys, who had been in Ireland since 2005.

The couple and their daughter Enrika, born in Lithuania in 2005, lived for a while with Ms Kuleviciene and her husband in Glenbeigh. Ms Lubiene had worked in various places, including The Towers Hotel in Glenbeigh and SuperValu in Killorglin.

By June 2013, her brothers had all returned to Lithuania. Jolanta remained in Ireland but she and her sister saw each other every day.

The witness said she called to her sister’s home most days for coffee, while Enrika was at school.

In the summer of 2012, Jolanta had got a job in the kitchen in St Joseph’s Home.

Ms Kuleviciene told prosecution counsel Isobel Kennedy, SC, how she last saw her sister on Friday June 14 and put in place an arrangement to have Jolanta babysit her four-year-old son the following night. They exchanged text messages early on Saturday to confirm the arrangement.

However, when Ms Kuleviciene called around to Jolanta’s house, at Langford Downs, with her son, at around 5pm, the curtains were closed and nobody answered the door bell.

Jolanta’s pet dog Chico came downstairs and started jumping at the window. The curtains were closed. She returned to her car and tried ringing Jolanta, then her niece Enrika’s phone but there was no reply. She rang a number of times.

Under cross-examination by Brendan Grehan, SC, Ms Kuleviciene said talk of divorce between her sister and Mr Lubys began after he returned to Sweden in April following a week or 10-day holiday in Killorglin.

Asked if she knew about a protection order obtained by her sister, Ms Kuleviciene said she did.

She also agreed some of the difficulty in the marriage centred around “Jolanta’s socialising”.

However, she said she only found out, after the murder, about Jolanta’s posting herself on “internet dating sites”.

“I only found out about the dating sites when the murder took place,” Ms Kuleviciene told Mr Grehan. Like every sister, she said, they kept secrets.

The trial continues.