Bona murder | Prosecution hits back at defence in closing arguments

Prosecutor Dr Lara Lanfranco has urged jurors trying a Marsaxlokk hawker for the murder of Anthony ‘Twanny l-Bona’ Borg not to let the nefarious character of the deceased cloud their judgment.

Borg died in February 2010 after being stabbed three times in the Marsaxlokk square following an argument with the accused, Allan Galea. Gunshots had been heard before the stabbing.

MORE Reports from the Anthony Borg murder jury

“Remember who the accused is in these proceedings. It is Allan Galea, not Anthony Borg or il-Bona. Borg was murdered and that is why we are here today. We are not here to judge the life that Borg may have lived or to see how bad a person he was or how many beatings he delivered. We are not here to see how he loaned money and the methods he used to recover it.”

Lanfranco explained that the prosecution had the choice of skipping this address, but said she felt that it would be a dereliction of her duty not to take the opportunity to address issues raised by the defence.

Chokers and domestic strife

She played down the importance of the choker incident – the deceased had his choker pulled, disliked it and left, said the lawyer. “He didn’t fight. He didn’t like it, just like Prancienne Borg didn’t like Galea teasing her and her child…. She remembered that Allan Galea, the gentleman of the year, had moved a chair to let her push her baby’s pram past. She didn’t remember that she had chucked him out of her house.”

The defence’s ‘script’

“A defence witness who testified yesterday gave us a nice picture of Anthony Borg and how aggressive he was in collecting debts. He doesn’t explain why he stuck around him while this was going on.

“A person who had escaped from Malta because of Borg had communicated with the witness and told him not to come to Malta, warning that if he did ‘he will cut you up’ – that word again.” She reported him as also thinking that there was someone else helping Anthony Borg as he could not read or write.

The murder weapon

Such was the size of the knife used in the crime, said Lanfranco, that it was “impossible” for the accused to have concealed it as, she said, the defence was suggesting.

Holding the murder weapon in her left hand, as she spoke, the prosecutor said Galea was not waving the 25cm blade around his head like a rodeo rider, but had been gesticulating angrily with it. The Maltese word is the same, she pointed out. Accusing the defence of “theatrics,” the lawyer proceeded to demonstrate how she believed the accused had delivered his come-on.

She reminded the jury that the accused had only been wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. No jacket, as a witness had testified to seeing his tattoos between wrist and elbow.

“It is impossible that he placed it in his pocket. And then ran. I don’t buy it,” said Lanfranco. “It makes absolutely no sense to say that the knife was in his pocket when you take into account what he was wearing at the time. At the end of the day, waving a knife or not, what difference does this make to the facts of the case.”

“Jigsaw puzzles sometimes have missing pieces,” Lanfranco continued by way of example, “but as it becomes more complete, an idea begins to form and the picture becomes clearer.”

Urging jurors to confine themselves to the evidence they had been prevented with, she warned against engaging in conjecture. “You are not investigators, but judges of fact. If there are points which were not raised and no conclusion had been reached, you are not obliged to investigate.”

She railed against what she called the “innuendoes and implications” made by the defence. “Who cares that Anthony Borg used a Pavi card to cut up cocaine? I don’t care. Is there proof that we found traces of cocaine on it? It was found in the truck. How did it get there? Don’t go there as you will be speculating and investigating. This is not an important part of this case, it doesn’t change anything.”

Of parrots

Referring to the defence’s description of the prosecution’s witnesses as ‘parrot-like’ – evidently a sore point – Lanfranco said the defence had repeated the claim so much, that  “the feathers are tickling my nose”.

“The ‘parrots’ did not say the same thing. They had different perceptions from each other. There were inexplicable differences and some were certain about particular things.”

She pointed to the fact that the accused had released several different statements. “Do you know that the accused himself confirmed much of the testimony of the ‘parrots’?” she asked, her voice rising.

The presence of inconsistencies in a witness’s statement did not necessarily mean that the witness was lying, said the prosecutor. The defence’s argument –that witnesses had been telling a scripted version of events – was not true because witness Clifton Cassar was being questioned at the same time, in different premises as Claire Magri, and by another inspector, said the prosecution.

Claire Magri, Borg’s girlfriend

The lawyer contested the allegation of an attempt to cover up the fact that Borg had fired shots during the confrontation.

“Magri did not mention the weapon and she has told us why. She had said that she had done this to avoid people getting hurt. If she had wanted to hide the weapon, she’s not very clever, because she left the spent cartridges behind. Wise move, woman,” the prosecutor scoffed. “Such presence of mind. Bravo.”

But a passing cleric who had prayed over the body of the victim had described the woman as hysterical, Lanfranco reminded the court, and Magri had not hesitated to admit that she had not mentioned some details to the police at first.

Paul Borg ix-Xu

She posited that bar owner Paul Borg, known as ix-Xu, had changed his version in his final statement. “He admitted that the pistol had been given to him, that a weapon had been handed to him by a girl.”

“Paul Borg made himself out to be a victim,” said Lanfranco of Borg’s second statement. “Please believe me Mr Policeman, I took it because I feared that there was going to be a murder,” the lawyer sneered.

“From a simple ‘I tried to calm him down’, he upped the dose of vitriol against Anthony Borg, trying to distance himself from the trouble. He claimed not to be close to the victim, but every week Anthony would be at his club. Paul Borg would even take the seeds out of tomatoes for Anthony Borg, he would keep king prawns in the freezer for him.”

Amanda Grech

Of Amanda Grech, the girlfriend of the accused, Lanfranco said she found perplexing that from the fact that from the words “cut him up” the witness had deduced that a knife fight was going to occur.

“I believe that she knows a lot more than she has told us.”

“When Allan Galea had spoken to Inspector Pullicino at the Depot, before releasing his statement, he mentioned something I could not understand without referring to what was said by Amanda Grech. ‘At first I was going to go with my harpoon, but because of my girlfriend, I decided to take the knife.’

“If Amanda Grech is upstairs washing the baby, why would the harpoon be a concern? And by the way, where was the harpoon? In the garage. Which door did we find open? The garage. This leads me to question whether Amanda Grech is telling the truth,” Lanfranco said.

“Did she hear more than she said that she heard? Did she see him going to the square with a harpoon and told him ‘what are you doing there?’ and so instead he took a knife?’

“Maybe Anthony Borg was not the most innocent person in the world...your focus must be on Allan Galea,” said the lawyer, warning the jurors not to “miss the woods for the trees.” “He was a human being at the end of the day, with a right to live. At the end of the day, he is the victim.”

The trial continues in the afternoon.

Lawyers Lara Lanfranco and Kristina Debattista from the Attorney General's Office are leading the prosecution, while lawyer Giannella de Marco, Joe Giglio and Steven Tonna Lowell are defence counsel. Lawyers Franco Debono and Matthew Brincat are appearing parte civile for the family of the deceased.

Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi is presiding.