Man threatened widow ‘I’ll get you’, says witness
A witness has told a cold-case murder trial she saw the accused banging on the door of a widowed pensioner while cursing at her, hours before the widow’s strangled body was found in her burning house. She said she did not tell gardaí at the time because her mother told her not to get involved.
Geraldine Brennan was giving evidence to the Central Criminal Court yesterday in the trial of a 53-year-old man accused of murdering her neighbour 30 years ago.
John Joseph Malone is charged with murdering 69-year-old Ann ‘Nancy’ Smyth on September 11, 1987, at her home on Wolfe Tone St in Kilkenny City.
Mr Malone, of Newpark in Kilkenny City, has pleaded not guilty.
Ms Brennan testified that she was living with her baby and parents at the time, three doors down from Ms Smyth. Her parents have since passed away.
She said she went to bed after midnight on September 10 and heard shouting on the street some time after that. She said there was just one voice, a male voice, and that she and her parents went out onto the street.
“He was banging on the window and banging on the door, saying: ‘Let me into the fucking house. I just want to fucking talk to you,’ ” said Ms Brennan.
“‘I’ll fucking get you,’ he said at one stage.
“We went out on the street. I saw John Joe Malone. We saw him at the door [of] Nancy Smyth’s house.”
She said that this banging and shouting went on for about half an hour.
“He kicked the door a few times and was banging on the window,” she continued. “He came out and slammed the gate once or twice.”
She was asked about his demeanour, and she said he was “angry and agitated”.
“We stood on the street and then we went back into the house,” she said. “The noise was still going on for a few minutes after that. Then it just went quiet.”
Ms Brennan said she and her parents presumed Mr Malone had gone.
“Next thing we heard then was someone shouting on the street that there was a house on fire,” she said. “We went outside again and saw that it was Nancy’s house.”
Ms Brennan was asked if she had seen Mr Malone on that street before and she said she had seen him at Ms Smyth’s house.
Under cross-examination by Colman Cody SC, defending, she agreed that what she told gardaí in 1987 was very different from what she told them in 2012. She had not told gardaí that she had gone out onto the street in her first statement.
“When we did find out that Nancy had been murdered, we thought it would be solved in months,” she said. “My mother said to me: ‘You needn’t tell them you saw anything, needn’t get involved, we’ve given statements.’ ”
She said her mother had been “a strong woman”.
“Even though I was 32, I was still the child in the house,” she said. “When we found out Nancy was murdered, we wondered when was someone going to be arrested for it.”
She agreed that she knew Mr Malone had been arrested.
She said that she felt she should make another statement after a TV reconstruction was produced.
The trial continues
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