By John Robertson
Scotsman [Scotland]
May 4, 2007
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=689652007
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| Donald Findlay: Described Crown's case as 'disjointed'. Photo by Neil Hanna |
Jurors in the Angelika Kluk murder trial were urged yesterday to find the courage to conclude that a priest had been involved in her death.
Donald Findlay, QC, for Peter Tobin, the man accused of the murder, said he was not suggesting Father Gerry Nugent had stabbed or bludgeoned the Polish student because there was no evidence to support the accusation.
However, he insisted that, no matter how painful it might be for some to accept, there was evidence the priest had known details of Ms Kluk's temporary grave under the floor of his church, before the information became public.
"Sometimes you have to reach down into yourself and have the courage and sheer guts to face up to things. That is what I am asking you to do," Mr Findlay told the jury at the High Court in Edinburgh, arguing that a second man, Matthew Spark-Egan, a vagrant, could also have been involved.
He rejected the prosecution's description of its case against Tobin as overwhelming and compelling, and submitted it was disjointed and disconnected. "The Crown have failed to prove the person who killed Angelika was Peter Tobin," Mr Findlay said.
Tobin, 60, was a handyman at St Patrick's Church, Glasgow, where Ms Kluk, 23, stayed last summer while on a working holiday in Scotland. He is accused of raping and murdering her by beating her over the head with a table leg, stabbing her repeatedly with a knife and concealing the body under the floor of the church.
In a special defence to the rape allegation, Tobin says he and Ms Kluk had sex but that it was with her consent.
Mr Findlay said in his closing speech that the advocate- depute, Dorothy Bain, in her address to the jury, had ignored "vast swathes of evidence".
He told the jury: "You must absolutely not veer towards convicting a man because you say to yourself, 'Since we cannot find out who it was, it must have been him'. To adopt that approach would be to bring about a catastrophic miscarriage of justice," Mr Findlay said.
He said Ms Bain had almost dismissively suggested there was no evidence to involve Fr Nugent or Mr Spark-Egan, 37, in the death of Ms Kluk. She had been wrong.
Fr Nugent had known that Ms Kluk's body had been found down a hatch just outside the confessional box.
"There was a suggestion he got the information from a newspaper," said Mr Findlay. "He got no such information from a newspaper. Next, he said someone must have told him. There is not a scrap of evidence that somebody told him anything.
"But I can say to you he had information about the location of the body of Angelika Kluk in a temporary grave under the floor of his own church long, long before he could have obtained it from any external source.
"That is evidence. You must make of that what you can. What you cannot do is ignore it."
Mr Spark-Egan, an alcoholic with a history of mental health problems, claimed he had been reading a paper in the church when he heard sounds and saw Tobin. The sounds he described could have been made by the body being dragged to and dropped down the hatch.
Mr Findlay pointed out that Mr Spark-Egan had gone to the police and given evidence against Tobin only after learning they were looking for the handyman. He had claimed he entered the church by a door which was covered by CCTV, but there was no footage of him.
"He can only be lying about that because he does not want you to know why he went into the church," Mr Findlay told the jury.
He said Mr Spark-Egan had had an obsession with violence for a long time, and wanted to be thought of as a "hard man". The line between wanting to be thought of as a man of violence and becoming a man of violence was very thin, he said.
"He had knowledge that could only be acquired by someone intimately involved in hiding the body in the void," Mr Findlay said. "Fr Nugent has remarkably similar knowledge about where the body was found.
"Is there evidence to show the involvement of another or others? The answer to that question is yes, yes and yes again."
He went on: "There is clear evidence that would entitle you to conclude that a man with an obsession for murder and a parish priest in the city of Glasgow were involved in the death of Angelika."
Mr Findlay asked the jury if Ms Kluk had had a sexual relationship with Fr Nugent, as he claimed, and with another older man, Martin Macaskill, 40, was it beyond being conceivable that there had been such a relationship with Tobin?
"If this is a frenzied sexual attack, there is no injury of any kind to the private parts," he said.
Mr Findlay illustrated the danger of taking one piece of evidence at face value, by reminding jurors that Kieran McLernan, a sheriff who had taken Ms Kluk to a golf driving range on the day before she was murdered, had told police they spoke for a couple of minutes as he dropped her off at the church.
Other evidence, in CCTV footage, showed the time had been many minutes.
He said Mr Macaskill had called Ms Kluk "aghrai", the same Gaelic term of endearment he had used for his wife, Annie Macaskill.
"There are some boundaries you do not cross. I would suggest calling your young mistress by the same pet name as you call your wife is a pretty cheap shot," said Mr Findlay.
The prosecution case against Tobin relied heavily on forensic evidence, the court has heard, but Mr Findlay cautioned the jury about placing too much reliance on it.
Tobin's fingerprints had been found on a bag and a tarpaulin beside the body. Those items had been in the garage where he worked. His DNA was on insulating tape wrapped around Ms Kluk's head as a gag, but he also used the tape in the garage.
Jeans found in a bin had been stained with Ms Kluk's blood and Tobin's DNA.
"Trousers that he has worn were worn at the time of the killing. I will accept that. Who was wearing them? Where is the evidence as to who was wearing them?" asked Mr Findlay.
He emphasised that there was no link between Tobin and the two probable murder weapons, a knife found in a bag beside the body and a table leg, discovered propped against a wall in the church's garden.
"No matter how often the Crown uses words like overwhelming, strong, compelling, the case they present against Mr Tobin is a series of disjointed and disconnected propositions," he said.
"And the Crown has failed to prove this was a sexually motivated attack and failed to prove the person who killed Angelika was Peter Tobin."
The jury is due to retire to consider its verdict today.
ACTORS IN COURTROOM DRAMA
• Father Gerry Nugent - the self-confessed alcoholic who also said he had a sexual relationship with Ms Kluk.
He is another person accused by the defence of involvement in her death.
• Kieran McLernan - the sheriff who taught Ms Kluk the basics of a golf swing, and took her to a driving range on the day before her death.
• Martin Macaskill - the Polish student's married lover, who could not give her up and found himself loving two women.
• Matthew Spark-Egan - said to have an obsession with murder. Did he have specialist knowledge that shows he was involved in the killing of Angelika Kluk?
• Annie Macaskill - the lover's wife, who was given a Gaelic pet name by her husband, the same term of endearment he used for Ms Kluk.
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