THE 30-year-old man accused of murdering a 64-year-old man whose dismembered body was found in a garden in Cork repeated his assertion that two men murdered the victim and compelled him to move the remains.

This assertion was repeated by Ionut Cosmin Nicholescu in a brief statement that accompanied EvoFit images prepared in Bucharest of two men from the descriptions given by Mr Nicholescu.

The man on trial for murder for the past fortnight said in his statement, “The two men murdered the victim. One man cut the head and arms. They compelled me to help them (to move the remains).” 

Defence senior counsel, Philipp Rahn, said during cross-examination of Detective Sergeant Katrine Tansley that the accused “was not trying to evade the authorities, he was amenable to the authorities” even when he was in Bucharest. The detective sergeant agreed.

She also agreed with Mr Rahn that the accused had no previous convictions in Romania or in Ireland.

Det. Sgt. Tansley said that when he became a suspect a European arrest warrant was obtained and Mr Nicholescu was arrested by Romanian police on November 8, 2021 in Bucharest. He did not oppose the warrant in court and was held in custody for his extradition to Ireland on December 3 2021, almost two years after the death of Frankie Dunne.

The defendant who had an address at Branistea Village, Damovita County, Romania is on trial charged with the murder of 64-year-old Francis (Frankie) Dunne between Friday December 27 and Saturday December 28 2019, at Castlegreine House, Boreenmanna Road, Cork.

AUDI CAR

Mr Rahn questioned Chief Superintendent Vincent O’Sullivan about a particular Audi car parked outside the derelict house. 

He replied, “I was satisfied there was no car parked outside Castlegreine House on the night of the murder.” 

Mr Rahn also asked him about a witness in a taxi on Boreenmanna Road where he described seeing “one man holding another man and another stabbing him in the throat.” 

The chief superintendent said enquiries into this were deemed exhausted after it was established that the witness was highly intoxicated, the location was a green area close to the South Link, ‘the sober taxi driver blew that out of the water’, this alleged incident occurred nine hours after the time of the murder, according to the time given by the defendant, and he added that some people might have blurred recollections after reading stuff on social media.

Detective Garda Pat Russell collated CCTV from 91 sources relevant to the murder investigation, nine of them being from vehicle dashcams and 82 from various fixed locations in the area, and a total of 7,800 hours of video recordings were harvested.

One of the targets of investigation was the movements of the accused from 6 p.m. on Friday December 27 until 3 a.m. on December 30 when he boarded a bus bound for Belfast before flying to Edinburgh and on to Bucharest.

The case resumes on Tuesday March 28 before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of eight women and four men at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.