Witness in murder trial denies cover-up

A witness in a murder trial at the Central Criminal Court has denied being involved in a cover-up after the killing by changing out of possibly blood-stained clothes and cleaning her apartment.

Eva Kocokova was being cross examined by Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, in the trial of a 51-year-old Slovakian man charged with murdering his Polish flatmate in 2007.

Josef Szabo of Rathlin House, Waterville, Blanchardstown in Dublin has pleaded not guilty to murdering Robert Kwiatkowski on or about April 20, 2007 at their home in Rathlin House. The 33-year-old died from a stab wound to the chest.

The court heard that Ms Kocokova and her partner, Ladislav Nemechek, shared the two-bedroom apartment with the defendant and the deceased.

She said she and her partner found Mr Kwiatkowski unconscious in the hallway that evening - his tongue stuck in his throat. She said they had rushed from the dining room from where they heard the accused push the victim out of his bedroom.

Mr Dwyer suggested that one could not hear a person being pushed.

“Someone must have pushed him,” she said, adding that this was the only explanation for his being on the floor.

“Not necessarily,” said Mr Dwyer.

Ms Kocokova said she did not know he had been stabbed until the following morning as he was wearing a dark t-shirt throughout the incident.

However Mr Dwyer read from the statements of the ambulance crew, who said he was stripped to the waste when they arrived, had an obvious wound to his chest and was lying in a pool of blood.

“Where did she think all the blood came from?” asked Mr Justice Barry White.

“He was bleeding from his mouth,” she said.

She insisted that the only time she saw a knife was when the accused arrived with a knife, suggesting they puncture his throat to help him breathe. However she said her partner refused to carry out this procedure.

She identified the clothes and shoes she said she was wearing during the incident, which she handed over to gardaí after Mr Kwiatkowski’s death.

Mr Dwyer asked her why there was not a speck of blood on any of her clothes considering she was there while her partner and Mr Szabo performed first aid.

She said she had changed her shoes as she had been about to go out before the incident. She denied changing anything else and said that despite wiping blood from her partner’s face and the victim’s face, blood would not have got on her clothes.

“I suggest to you that you actually changed your clothes in full before you were interviewed by the police,” said Mr Dwyer.

“I swore on the bible here to tell the truth and what I said about not changing, that’s true,” she said.

Mr Dwyer also suggested that she used a towel found in the living area to clean up blood on the floor. She said she had been about to use it to wipe blood from her partner’s face when a garda told her not to. Mr Dwyer said no garda had mentioned this in a statement.

“I’m suggesting to you there was a clean-up operation going on in the kitchen/dining/living room area on the night in question,” he said.

“There was no clean-up,” she insisted.

She also insisted that the victim was not drunk. Mr Dwyer read from pathology results that showed he was “grossly intoxicated” and from a statement she gave to gardaí that he came home drunk that evening and began pushing people.

“That’s not true,” she said of the statement.

She agreed that she, her partner and the victim had a long conversation about money that evening and that Mr Kwiatkowski owed them a lot of money. However, she said she and her husband were not quarrelling.

“Since yesterday, you’ve been misleading the jury, you’ve been lying to the jury,” said Mr Dwyer. “What are you covering up? You’re hiding something.”

She said she had nothing to hide.

“I want justice for all of us,” she concluded.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of three women and nine men.