Accused told another of murder plans, court hears

The trial of a South African man accused of murdering his Irish born wife heard that the accused told another man that he was going to kill his wife days before she was found dead at their home.

Anton Mulder (aged 44) of Maelduin, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath pleaded not guilty to the murder, but guilty to the manslaughter of his wife Colleen Suzanne Mulder.

She was found dead in the bedroom of their house at the same address on December 17, 2004.

At the Central Criminal Court today Mr Andreas Johannes Loubser, who is also South African, said that he had a conversation on December 8 with Anton Mulder outside the fast food restaurant where they worked.

In the course of this talk the accused told him that he was going to her (Colleen’s) house up north and would kill her.

Mulder, originally from Durban in South Africa, also said to him that it was, “very easy to do things in this country,” that he would only do “five or six years.”

Mulder added that he would still be a young man when he came out of jail.

The accused, he claimed, was worried that Colleen would take their children to Northern Ireland, where she was from.

In response to prosecution counsel Mr Gerard Clarke SC Mr Loubser said that at the time he was working as a chef at a branch of KFC.

Mulder was a regional manager with the company.

Loubser said he got on with the Mulders, but added that his impression was that the relationship between the couple was not good.

A few days after that conversation Loubser asked Mulder how were things at home.

In reply the accused told him that Colleen had returned to Dunshaughlin, but he and his wife were sleeping in separate rooms.

In a previous conversation, in late 2004, Mr Loubser said that Mulder told him that Colleen had left him for another man and had gone back to her mother’s home in Bangor.

Mr Lousber said he wondered why was Colleen with her mother if she had run off with another man.

Under cross-examination from defence counsel Mr Roddy O’Hanlon SC he said that while he took what Anton Mulder said seriously, he did not go to the Gardaí.

Mr Loubser said that he did not feel Mulder was shooting off his mouth when he said he was going to kill Colleen, because he feared losing his children.

Sergeant James Troy said that Anton Mulder claimed in statements to Garda, taken on the 17th of December, that he had barricaded himself in a bedroom at night because he feared for his safety.

This, the defendant said, was due to threats made by his late wife.

Colleen, Mulder claimed, said that he would “get done,” if he went to the Gardaí about certain matters.

Earlier Judge Philip O’Sullivan made an order excluding Colleen Mulder’s brother William Carson Pollock, and his wife Andrea, from the grounds of the courts for the duration of the trial.

He made this after the foreman of the jury said that Colleen Mulder’s brother had been making himself a bit familiar with a member of the jury.

The jury were also aware that last Tuesday a person, later identified as Mr Pollock, was incarcerated by Mr Justice Paul Carney for causing a commotion in the court when the jury was being selected.

One of the jurors said that on Wednesday of this week Mr Pollock approached one of the jurors outside the court, and asked to borrow the person’s newspaper.

Mr Pollock read out the article about the case, and said to the juror that he was the person who caused the commotion.

It was also claimed that Mr Pollock had greeted, smiled and nodded at the said juror.

The juror in question told the court that he felt this “familiarity was wrong,” however he felt that he would be able to carry on his duties.

The case, which is being heard by a jury of ten men and two women, resumes on Monday.