Accused said he planned to kill Ana Kriégel, co-accused told gardaí

A boy accused of the murder and violent sexual assault of Ana Kriégel told his co-accused he planned to kill the girl a month previously, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

The co-accused, Boy B, told gardaí in an interview he thought Boy A was joking when he told him he wanted to kill the 14-year-old girl.

Boy B told detectives he called for Ana that day on Boy A’s behalf because Boy A told him he wanted to talk to her about “relationship issues.” He said he thought we was doing Boy A a “friendly favour”.

He denied knowing his co-accused was planning to kill Ana in the abandoned house where her body was later found.

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The boy previously told gardaí he had witnessed Boy A choke Ana and take off her clothes in the house while wearing a "zombie" mask. Detective Garda Donal Daly asked Boy B why he did not try to save her.

Boy B said he was scared and “frozen”. Asked why he lied to gardaí when they started searching for Ana the next day, Boy B said he was “ashamed” and was scared of being “framed” by Boy A.

The prosecution allege Boy B lured Ana from her home at 5pm on May 14th, 2018 on the pretence of meeting Boy A, who Ana was “interested” in. Boy A then allegedly violently sexually assaulted and murdered her in the derelict farmhouse as Boy B watched.

Boy A has pleaded not guilty to the murder and sexual assault "involving serious violence" of Ana Kriégel on May 14th, 2018, at Glenwood House, Laraghcon, Clonee Road, Lucan in Dublin.

Boy B has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the girl on the same date.

The accused were 13 at the time of the alleged offence and are 14 now.

Backpack

In his seventh interview after his arrest for the murder of Ana, Boy B told detectives that a month previously Boy A “came up to me and said, ‘Hey, want to kill somebody?

“I said ‘No’. He replied, ‘Ah here, why not?’ I said, ‘Because it’s retarded’. He was like, ‘Oh, come on’.

“I asked him who he was planning to kill and he replied with Ana Kriégel. And I replied with ‘in your dreams’.”

Boy B continued: “I didn’t think he was being serious”. He said he thought Boy A was messing. He said he and his friends would often joke about things like that but they were never serious.

He said he had no idea Boy A was planning to kill Ana when they went to the abandoned house.

Asked if Boy A decided to target Ana because she was “different”, Boy B said he didn’t know.

The detective asked why Boy A would bring a backpack containing a mask, gloves and shin-guards with him. Boy B replied that Boy A wore things like that, adding “the mask is weird.”

Det Gda Daly asked: "Why didn't you do anything in the room?"

Boy B replied: “Because I was scared. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do because my brain was frozen, frozen in place. I didn’t know what to do.”

Asked why he didn’t tell gardaí what happened when they called the next day, Boy B said he was “just trying to forget about it and pretend nothing happened.”

“Did you not think you owed it to Ana and her family?” Det Gda Daly asked.

Boy B replied he was scared of being framed by Boy A

He said he had lied to the detectives in the previous interviews because he was “ashamed” of not helping her. “I was too scared. I was shocked and horrified.”

He said he was shocked by the revelation that Ana’s blood was found on Boy A’s boots and that he forgot some things.

“How would you forget a girl having her trousers pulled off by a boy wearing a zombie mask and shin-pads and other black things?” the detective asked.

“Because when I got home I just wanted to forget about it, to turn everything back to the way it was,” he said.

“But you could have saved her,” the detective said.

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you try and save her.”

“I don’t know.”

In the eighth interview Det Gda Daly accused the boy of telling “lie after lie after lie”.

“You go and collect a girl that (Boy A) wants to kill and you bring her to an abandoned house and you, in your words, ‘hand over’ that girl to (Boy A), the girl he said he wanted to kill,” Det Gda Daly told him.

“And then you were deceptive afterwards. You lie to everybody. Lie lie lie. You’re in a corner and you try to wiggle out of it by telling a story to suit. Do you see how this looks for you?”

Boy B said that he did. Det Gda Daly put it to Boy B that he let “a charade” play out in the days after Ana went missing as people searched for her while he knew she was in the abandoned house.

“I didn’t know he would murder her,” Boy B said. “I kept thinking to myself this isn’t real, this isn’t happening. I kept thinking Boy A wouldn’t do this. It’s not like him.”

Zombie mask

Earlier in his seventh interview with detectives, Boy B was shown photos of items found in a backpack during a search of Boy A’s house including kneepads, shinguards, a “snood” scarf and a homemade mask.

Boy B said he recognised the backpack because Boy A wore it whenever he went outside. Asked about the mask, Boy B said Boy A had made it for Halloween. Boy B referred to it as a “zombie mask”. He said it was “really cool” and that he had worn it before himself.

Asked why he called it a zombie mask, Boy B said that was what Boy A called it.

After Boy B repeatedly denied seeing Boy A wearing the mask when Ana was attacked, Det Gda Donal Daly told him: “This is really, really important. Was (Boy A) wearing that mask. Just the truth.”

Boy B said Boy A was wearing the mask.

Boy B also said he was in the abandoned house in a separate room to Ana and Boy A when he heard “shuffling”.

He went to the room where they were and saw Boy A wearing the mask as he was taking off Ana’s clothes. He said Boy A also had his hood up at this point.

Boy B said knew it was Boy A behind the mask because “only (he) would have it and because a couple of days before I had been in his house, and he still had it.”

Boy B said Boy A wore the mask for “the whole incident” and never took it off. He agreed with Det Gda Daly that a sketch he had previously drawn of the scene for gardaí should have shown Boy A wearing the mask.

Boy A was also wearing gloves later found in the backpack as he choked Ana, Boy B told gardaí.

After further questioning, Boy B also told gardaí his co-accused was also wearing the shin-guards found in the backpack.

Asked how he knew this, Boy B said he saw Boy A bending down and touching the shin guards while he was outside the house speaking to Ana.

The trial continues on Wednesday before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of eight men and four women.