A PHARMACIST who is accused of murdering her next-door neighbour in Newry, Co Down, told police who arrested her: “I cannot believe this – it’s bizarre”, a jury heard yesterday.
A Belfast Crown Court jury heard from a Det Sgt Cross who said he arrested Karen Walsh at her home on Dublin Road in Newry on December 27th, 2008, two days after the battered body of Maire Rankin (81) was discovered.
The jury also heard that she had repeatedly asked a police officer if her elderly neighbour had been “beaten” within hours of her battered body being found on Christmas Day.
Det Sgt Graham told the jury she attended at the home of Mr Rankin and was told by Ms Walsh’s husband Peter Durkin that his wife had visited the pensioner the night before, Christmas Eve 2008.
Asked by prosecuting Liam McCollum QC what Ms Walsh said, the officer told the court that Ms Walsh informed her she had visited her neighbour the night before at about 10pm to give her a bottle of vodka as a present and had left again half an hour later.
The sergeant told the lawyer that Ms Walsh asked if her neighbour “had been beaten” and if the door had been left open, adding that “she asked me those questions a number of times”.
Ms Walsh, from Dublin, denies murdering Ms Rankin between December 23rd and 26th, 2008.
The jury has already heard it is the Crown case that the “frail, fragile and delicate” Ms Rankin was allegedly sexually assaulted after she was beaten to death and that DNA evidence links Ms Walsh to the attack.
The trial continues.