Lawyers dispute testimony of murder victim’s sister

Lawyers for a Nigerian man who denies murdering his Jamaican wife with a lump hammer today asked the victim’s sister whether she was mistaken about who had assaulted her sister in the past.

Nicola Curtis has been giving evidence in the trial of Goodwill Udechukwu (aged 32) with a previous address at Royal Canal View, Royal Canal Bank, Phibsboro who denies murdering Natasha Gray (aged 25) at the same address on February 18, 2003.

The body of the mother-of-two was found upside down in a baby’s cot with a lump hammer beside her.

Yesterday, Mrs Curtis told the jury that Mr Udechukwu had assaulted her sister in the past and injured her eye.

Today Mr Pieter Le Vert BL (with Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC), defending, put it to the witness that her sister had made a statement to a doctor claiming it was her ex-partner Guy Mboze who had caused the injury.

Mr Le Vert produced a statement from a medical practitioner called Simon Mills who said he had seen the deceased on January 3 and again on July 31 2001. On the second occasion he said Ms Gray reported being the victim of an assault and named her assailant as Guy Mboze, who was her partner at the time. He said his patient had bad bruising to her left eye.

Mrs Curtis said she remembered her sister had the eye injury when she was living with the accused on Aran Quay.

She said her sister had told her she had bounced it off a door. When she asked the accused he smiled and said: “She told you.”

She said she thought this could have been “in November or so. So it was after.”

The witness is currently being asked about the movements of Mr Mboze and the accused in the days before her sister was killed.

She denied that her sister had come home and gave the accused a Valentines card on the Friday before she was killed.

Mrs Curtis said: “There was something in the paper about Goodwill that was very bad and my sister would not give him a Valentines card. That’s why she did not come home.”

She said her sister had left the house on Thursday and did not return until the Sunday morning before she met her death.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins and a jury of five men and seven women.