Cork strangulation 'made to look like suicide'

Two Cork men robbed then strangled a 50-year-old neighbour with a piece of electrical cable before making a "crude" attempt to make it look like suicide, a court heard today.

Prosecution counsel Mr Alex Owens SC told a murder trial jury at the Central Criminal Court that Thomas Penkert (21) and Brian Walsh (22) murdered Nora Kiely in her flat after robbing her on July 15, 2002.

"The evidence will be effectively that on that date at about 9.30 or 9.40pm they broke into Nora Kiely's bedsit for the purpose of robbery and during the course of that Nora Kiely was strangled," he told the jury.

"The accused came in, Nora Kiely was strangled, this particular flex was used and she was killed.

"When the gardaí arrived at about midnight she was lying on the bed naked from the waist down and she was dead.

"A crude attempt was made to effectively pretend in some way that she committed suicide by placing of the knife in her hand."

The two accused lived in the same apartment building as Ms Kiely in Leitrim St, close to the centre of Cork.

Both Penkert and Walsh - who shared a flat at the building - have pleaded not guilty to Ms Kiely's murder. But they have both admitted robbing Ms Kiely of less than €20 in cash and two items of jewellery.

The two men denied a charge that they attempted to enter another flat in the building with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm on another neighbour, Ms Tatton, on July 15, 2002.

Ms Tatton told the court she returned to her flat from the communal shower late on July 15 after hearing whispers between two men nearby – one of whom she said sounded like the "boy from flat three", which was where Penkert resided.

She said one of the voices said something like: "One, two, three – hit her", before someone tried to kick her door down. She said she had heard the "boy from flat three" talking to Nora Kiely in the past, sometimes "mocking" her, but she was unable to recognise him in the court.

John Kennedy, who also lived in the building in 2002, told the court that he knocked on Nora Kiely's window at about 9.40pm on the July 15 after he found the front door to the building locked.

He noticed her light was switched off soon after he knocked. Penkert came to the door shortly after and let him in.

Detective Garda Chris O'Connor of the fingerprint unit of the Garda Technical Bureau told the court he found a small pink lamp with a severed cable in Nora Kiely's flat.

Further searches of the Leitrim St building revealed a section of electrical cable with a plug on one end in an overgrown courtyard at rear.

Penkert and Walsh have pleaded guilty to stealing a blue-handled knife, a tub of butter, some groceries and drinks and a phone charger from Ms Tatton's address.

But they pleaded not guilty to a charge that between the July 8 and 14, 2002 they robbed Donal Scannell – another resident of the Leitrim St building - of less than €70 in cash.

The case continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Diarmuid O'Donovan and a jury of six men and six women.