Couple could only live together ‘in afterlife’, Tanti told cell-mate

Finnish prisoner testifies in case against Erin Tanti, accused of the murder and assisted suicide of Lisa Marie Zahra

A Finnish criminal who shared a jail cell at the Mount Carmel forensic unit with Erin Tanti, said that the 24-year-old had told him that he and Lisa Marie Zahra did not jump together from Dingli Cliffs.

The 28-year-old witness said he spent some days in the same ward as Tanti, who is pleading not guilty to the murder of his student Lisa Marie Zahra, 15, and assisting her to commit suicide, and defiling her.

Zahra died in what was believed to have been a botched suicide pact, when she jumped off Dingli Cliffs back in March 2014.

The witness said that Tanti had told him that the couple could not live together if not in the afterlife, because the girl was under age. “Nobody would approve. When someone says something like that, it’s tragic.”

He said Tanti told him that he had saved up money to leave the country, possibly for Ireland.

The witness admitted that he is currently under the same medical treatment as when he was in the Forensic Unit at Mt Carmel.

The witness, a former drug addict, said he has spent six years of his life in prison, and that he is on trial for a separate incident.

The defence has requested that a psychologist be appointed to examine the documentation by Steven Farrugia Sacco, who was a court appointed IT expert and the diary of Lisa Marie Zahra.