Heartbroken parents anguished over mystery surrounding murder motive

The father-in-law of Duncan Zammit, the 32-year-old victim in the New Year's Day tragedy that also left his alleged aggressor dead, said Zammit pleaded with Nicholas Gera as he was being stabbed to stop as his three-month old twins slept by his side.

Relaying his daughter's version of events on Bondiplus, entrepreneur Anglu Xuereb said his wife heard her husband Duncan Zammit tell his aggressor: "There are my children here", as he was stabbed in his bedroom.

Claire Zammit Xuereb was sleeping with her husband, with their twins asleep, one on each side of the bed, when Gera is believed to have entered their bedroom - by entering through the roof and onto the terrace - and proceeded to stab Zammit to death.

"There were bloodstains on the pillow where Duncan slept, and the babies' cot was bloodstained. The fighting started there. My daughter protected the children," Xuereb said.

Xuereb said his daughter heard nothing being said between the two men.

Xuereb yesterday recounted the harrowing scene he found at his daughter's Falcon House penthouse in Sliema, and her version of events of the double-murder that also left Gera, 26, dead.

"At 7:05am she called me, telling me a man came in with knives. 'There's blood, come here...'. When I arrived I found the police on site. I saw them on the floor, one on top of each other, and realised they were lifeless. I was shocked," Xuereb said.

Both the Xuereb and Gera families were interviewed on Bondiplus yesterday, opening a window on the heartbreak being experienced by both families as so many questions remain unanswered on the bizarre double murder.

Claire Zammit Xuereb was interrogated by police on Wednesday for three hours and a half, but declined to have her lawyer present with her during the interrogation.

In his interview, Xuereb said that when he arrived at his daughter's apartment, he found the doors of the bedroom were stained with blood, from where the two men are believed to have emerged and ended up dead inside the hall.

A tearful Xuereb said his daughter was passing through the most traumatic of periods, as he struggled to take in the fact that she had become a widow at such a young age. "She told me she will be ready to forgive Nicholas Gera, in time, for having committed this massacre."

On her part, Gera's mother Tanja, who adopted her son from Bosnia, sent her condolences to the Xuereb family. "I don't know what happened and we are trying to find out what happened. We read a lot of things in the papers but we don't know if they are true or not. I don't anything from the police. I want to know the truth."

One of the unanswered questions so far is whether Duncan Zammit and Nicholas Gera were acquainted with each other. Both families have been adamant that they did not know each other, or did not know whether the two men knew each other.

The former chief of forensics Anthony Abela Medici, also interview on Bondiplus, explained that the police autopsy of the two men would determine the direction the stab wounds came from, in what position the victims were when they were stabbed, and that the autopsy would include a toxicology analysis as well as an anal examination to determine whether any sexual contact took place.