Magistrate returns to scene of Sliema double murder

This morning and at 7.15pm on Tuesday evening Magistrate Edwina Grima returned with forensic experts to the scene of the double murder at Falcon House in Sliema where Duncan Zammit and Nicholas Gera died after being stabbed on New Year’s Day in Zammit’s penthouse.

Using ultra-violet equipment to find fingerprints on the scene of the crime, Magistrate Grima and the experts are trying to reconstruct what happened before, during and just after the fight leaving Duncan Zammit and Nicholas Gera bleeding to death from stab wounds. The fight was witnessed by Claire, Duncan’s wife, and her collaboration with the investigators is crucial to find out what really happened in the Zammit’s penthouse on the early morning of New Year’s Day and what led to it.

At the beginning of this month the toxicological and DNA samples taken from their bodies were sent to a laboratory in the UK.

While some of the police investigators are keen to solve the case and are still digging to try and find new facts, others have decided that “the case is closed” and there is little that can be done to solve it.

They want people to believe that in the early hours of New Year’s Day:

• Nicholas Gera, left work,
• had a couple of drinks in some bars and then went to an apartment in Sliema, climbed on the roof,
• knew exactly where he was,
• got down onto a terrace where he knew a door would be open,
• got into the penthouse and got himself a knife, perhaps two, from the kitchen and started stabbing Duncan Zammit while he lay in his bed,
• Duncan then pushed him out of the bedroom and the two fell on top of each other and bled to death in the presence of Duncan’s wife Claire, who remembers plunging a knife into Nicholas to defend her husband.
• The police have not answered several important questions so far:
• Where was Duncan between 1.45am and 6.45am?
• What did Nicolas do in these five hours?
• What led Nicholas to go to Zammit’s pent house unarmed, not equipped to carry out a break in?
• How many times had Nicholas Gera been to the penthouse before?
• Did Nicholas attack Duncan with one knife which he got from the knife rack and why was the second knife brought from a drawer in the kitchen?
• Did the two men talk and shout at each other before the stabbing started?
• Who used the two wine glasses left on the billiard table and who smoked the two cigarettes from a packet left in the same place?
• What DNA tests have been taken that might throw light on this double murder?

Allowing so much time to pass without trying to reconstruct what happened on the scene of the crime, not doing enough patient investigative work with neighbours and friends, hurrying to declare that the two men did not know each other, helps those who have an interest to bury this double murder in mystery and silence for ever.

The return of the Magistrate and forensic experts to the scene of the crime on Tuesday evening rekindles the hope of those who want the case of this double murder solved.