Jury declares Għargħur double murder accused insane

A jury has concluded that a man indicted for murder after stabbing his mother and aunt to death was legally insane when the crime was committed.

The eight-one verdict was reached on the third day of Kevin Micallef’s insanity trial. 

Micallef, 47, is indicted for the wilful homicide of his mother Antonia Micallef and his aunt Maria Carmel Fenech at their Għargħur home in July 2018. 

The purpose of the insanity trial was to establish whether the defendant was legally insane at the time of the commission of the offence and fit to stand trial. 

Psychiatrists who had assessed or treated the accused at various stages since his arrest all reported that he suffered from psychosis, which was a symptom of Huntington’s disease - a hereditary genetic disorder which Micallef had been diagnosed with.

Micallef suffered from delusions and believed that his mother and aunt were poisoning him in order to kill him. He also held the belief that they had turned his wife against him because ‘they wanted him for themselves.’

“He still holds this belief even after five years of being followed and given the necessary medication,” one psychiatrist told the court this week.

The medical consensus was that although Micallef was receiving treatment for the illness, he should be held at Mount Carmel Hospital. 

Lawyer Francois Dalli was defence counsel. Prosecutors Kaylie Bonett and Sean Gabriel Azzopardi appeared for the Office of the Attorney General