Murder victim 'bled inside defendant's bedroom', court hears

A murder trial at the Central Criminal Court has heard that there was "very strong support" for the scenario that the victim bled inside the defendant’s bedroom.

Two forensic scientists were giving evidence on the seventh day of the trial of a 51-year-old Slovakian man charged with murdering his Polish flatmate.

Josef Szabo of Rathlin House, Waterville, Blanchardstown has pleaded not guilty to murdering Robert Kwiatkowski on April 20, 2007, at their home in Rathlin House. The 33-year-old man died from a stab wound to the chest after his two other flatmates said they found him collapsed in the hallway.

Dr Geraldine O’Donnell of The Forensic Science Laboratory said the DNA profile she extracted from blood found in Mr Szabo’s room matched that of the deceased. The blood on a knife found in the hallway also matched Mr Kwiatkowski’s.

Dr Jennifer Ryan, a blood pattern analyst at the laboratory, examined the pattern that Mr Kwiatkowski’s blood had left on the duvet and carpet in the defendant’s room.

“My findings very strongly support the contention that the pattern of staining on the carpet resulted from Robert Kwiatkowski actively bleeding in the bedroom,” she said.

Dr Ryan said she also tested other scenarios, including that one of the three occupants of the apartment had gone into the room with blood-soaked clothing or hands after attending to the victim.

She said none of the clothing was blood-soaked and so could not drip blood. She said that blood on their hands could have resulted in blood drops on the carpet, but would not have resulted in the volume of blood found or the pattern, which she described as a trail between the door and the bed.

She also excluded as a possibility that someone with the victim’s blood on their hands might have flicked or cast off the blood found. She said the pattern found was not consistent with blood being cast off bloodied hands.

She said there was no blood apparent on the living room floor, which she described as "noticeably clean".

Dr Ryan agreed with Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, that blood dripping from a blood-soaked towel she saw in the hall could have caused the volume of blood spots found on the bedroom carpet.

“This hasn’t been put to me before,” she said.

She said she had a concern relating to the towel and had asked the gardaí about it. They told her it had not been in Mr Szabo’s room.

She considered Mr Dwyer’s scenario however, telling him that there was only one trail between the door and the bed. if the towel dripped on the way in, it would have to be carefully cradled on the way out so as not to drip again, she explained.

Mr Dwyer asked her about her evidence that the floor of the living area was "noticeably clean".

“That to me was noteworthy,” she said.

She agreed that given the large volume of blood in the hallway, it would be expected that someone walking from there into the living area would transfer some blood from footwear onto the floor.

She said that technology used to show blood on a clean surface would not have been useful in this case because the victim lived in the apartment and could have bled there at any time before the incident.

Sergeant Michael Kennedy told the court that a toxicology report on the accused man’s blood showed it was negative for alcohol and drugs. The jury had already heard from the pathologist that the deceased was "grossly intoxicated". The blood from the other two flatmates was not analysed, he said.

The prosecution has now finished its evidence and the trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of three women and nine men.