THE half-sister of a man accused of the 1990 murder of an Islander has claimed he confessed to her shortly after he was found not guilty at an earlier trial.
Diane Harvey said that Rickie Tregaskis told her he had stabbed Barbara Griffin to death and repeatedly stabbed her elderly aunt, Emma Anton.
Mr Tregaskis (52) denies murder and attempted murder.
On the fourth day of the Assize jury trial in the Royal Court, Ms Harvey said Mr Tregaskis made the confessions when he came to stay with her in Guernsey from September to November 1991, shortly after he was initially acquitted of the two offences.
Ms Harvey told the court that she had been adopted as a baby and Mr Tregaskis, his mother, brother and sister all visited her.
The court was told that Mr Tregaskis stayed with her after the rest of his family had returned home following their first-ever visit. Ms Harvey said: ‘We discussed all sorts of things.
‘We did talk about the murder trial and he said he had done it, he had killed Mrs Griffin.
‘He said he’d stabbed her in the heart. He said he’d stabbed Emma Anton about 14 times.
‘He said the police were stupid: they thought it was a burglary gone wrong. He said he had made it look like a burglary.’
Solicitor General Matthew Jowitt, prosecuting, asked about the defendant’s demeanour during the conversation, to which Ms Harvey replied that Mr Tregaskis had been ‘quite cocky, because he’d got away with murder’.
Mr Jowitt asked: ‘Did he show any remorse or sorrow?’
She said: ‘No. I didn’t know whether to believe him or whether it was just bravado.’
Advocate Mark Boothman, defending, questioned why she did not tell the police after hearing the alleged confession.
She replied: ‘Because they couldn’t do anything about it. You couldn’t be tried for the same crime twice.’
Ms Harvey added that she did not ask Mr Tregaskis to leave as he had assured her that he would ‘never hurt my family’.
Advocate Boothman asked why she had kept in touch with Mr Tregaskis, by phone call and letter afterwards, and said: ‘You’ve made up this alleged confession.’
Ms Harvey replied: ‘I’ve not made anything up.’
Ms Harvey had also introduced Mr Tregaskis to her former fiancé, and the advocate asked: ‘Why on earth would you stay in contact with a man who was so violent?’
She said: ‘He was never violent towards me.’
The court also heard from Lee Turner, a former detective inspector with the States police who had carried out a review of the case.
Mr Turner agreed that an identification parade was normally carried out in cases where identity was in dispute, but when asked by Advocate Boothman whether one was ever held, he said: ‘No.’
Mr Turner also agreed that a thorough forensic search had taken place at Mrs Griffin’s flat but no traces of Mr Tregaskis were discovered.
Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit, prosecuting, read an agreed statement of facts which confirmed that Mr Tregaskis had bought a Hitler Youth knife from a St Helier antique shop and had shown it to friends in a pub, and that the two victims’ wounds could have been inflicted by a similar single-bladed weapon.
The trial continues.
