‘Serial killer’ on trial | Verdict may be known tonight, defence claims ‘half baked’ investigation

The defence counsel to a man who is currently facing trial for the murder of 68 year-old Maria Stella Magrin in 1986, claimed tonight that the prosecution was handling a "half baked investigation" which was given to them by the police, who were the people who had to get their facts right.

Lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace who is appearing for Salvatore Mangion known as 'Kalanċ' 47 of Żejtun, told jurors to take note of a long list of flaws in the investigation which led the police to 'solve' a so called 'cold case.'

"Do you know the pressure an investigator faces when dealing with cold-cases?" Micallef Stafrace asked jurors, as he explained the procedure for such crimes to be re-investigated.

"I'm not alleging any manipulation or fabrication, but what I bring before you is a series of facts which may be defined as fatal deficiencies in their investigation," he said.

Standing behind a crouched Salvatore Mangion, the lawyer claimed that the police charged his client in the absence of any other contradictory statement.

"Just look at my client, he doesn't even know what is going on around him, and the police come to tell me that all they have is his admission to a statement that he did it with an accomplice?...is this enough?" he asked.

"Or is it that the deceased' accomplice who spoke so lucidly to the police and later died, had conveniently shifted the blame onto Mangion? If you had to ask me, I would tell you that straight away," he argued.

Simon Micallef Stafrace asked how was it that the police never made conducted any blood matching excercise on the two types of blood found on the scene of the crime, and why is it that no fingerprints of the accused were found on ay bit of evidence on the crime scene.

He stressed that it was odd for the police to rely on a shady witness - the deceased and co-accused - because their case had to be based on hard facts.

It was Osvaldo Mangion and not the accused who knew the Birgu area quite well as he used to frequent the bars there, and it was the same Osvaldo Mangion who knew where the victim's house was in Birgu 25 years after the crime, and led investigators to it.

"My client barely knew the place and struggled to guess where the victim's door was. He was and still is so lost in his mind, and while the police told us that they wanted to be sure and took him again to Birgu, they said that they photographed him pointing to the door, but these photographs were never produced here, and now it's too late!" he claimed.

'Brutal death'

Earlier, forensic pathologist Ali Salfraz and consultant histopathologist James De Gaetano, who together with  Prof. Marie Therese Camilleri Podesta' had carried out an autopsy on 68 year-old Maria Stella Magrin told jurors that the victim had died a "brutal death."

"Besides haemorrhaging, the victim's lungs were stuck to the chest wall," the experts said, adding that Magrin had received a total of 11 stab wounds, all of which were inflicted with alot of strength.

"One of the stab wounds was so violent that the penetrating knife broke a rib and punctured a lung," the said.

'Serial killer'

Mangion was 21 when the murder was committed, and used to be in the company of two other suspects, Leli Spiteri and his nephew Oswald Spiteri, who are both dead. All three knew the victim.

The accused and Oswald Spiteri had both admitted their involvement in the murder when arrested some 20 years after.

Leli Spiteri died in 2004 while Oswald Spiteri committed suicide in the police lock-up during the investigations on the case.

The accused is already serving a life sentence for the murder of Rosina Zammit, 54, in Safi in 1984, and was also jailed for 21 years for the murder of Francis Caruana in 1998. Both were killed by stabbing.

Two years ago, Judge Joseph Galea Debono had described Mangion as "Malta's serial killer.'

Lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace is appearing for Mangion.

Prosecution closes

At the end of this morning's sitting, State Prosecutor Nadine Sant informed the Court that the prosecution had no more evidence to produce.

Earlier, fingerprint experts ex-PS 210 Tarcisio Vella and ex-PS 673 Joseph Mallia, who were appointed by the inquiring Magistrate to elevate the fingerprints on the crime scene back in 1986, said that the victim's home looked quite dejected and not well-kept at all.

They said that it was very hard for them to find any fingerprints on furniture because of its condition.

Other prints were useless as they were either too small or too smudged. The only prints they extracted from the crime scene, as they believed they could be useful, were from a bottle and a box. However, these did contain the requisite characteristics to be matched against those of the accused or of any other suspect.

The two also examined a torch found at the crime scene, which Police believed to have belonged to the assailants. However, there were no prints on the torch, neither on the outside nor on the batteries, something the experts said was extremely unusual and was most likely due to the fact that something was used to prevent fingerprints from being left on the torch.