Maria Lourdes Agius’s partner had threatened to kill her as the couple fought on the eve of her murder, her mother testified, recalling how she had found her daughter lying “cold” in her bed the next morning.

Mary Agius had overheard the couple’s angry voices the previous night as she tried to get some sleep inside her room and so, when early next day “Mike” told her that her daughter had gone out shopping, she did not believe him.

“I looked at his face and knew that he had done something,” explained the mother when testifying at the trial by jury of Michael Emmanuel who stands accused of the murder. 

The Ivorian national is pleading not guilty to having suffocated the mother of seven on that September 15 night five years ago inside the Paola flat which the couple shared with the victim’s mother. 

Just two days before, the accused had punched his partner’s mother on the head when the umpteenth argument broke out between the couple.

On that occasion, he had pushed her daughter into a corner, hitting and kicking her, while telling her mother to move out. 

While waiting for an ambulance downstairs she was joined by her daughter who moaned in pain, saying that her back hurt. 

The accused had allegedly flung a shoe cabinet onto her daughter’s back and had also struck her with an old, heavy chair.

Following that incident, the lock to the flat’s door was changed by her son, John.

However, later that evening “Mike” returned, kicking at the door and calling out to Lourdes to let him in.

“Lourdes and I were scared as he called from outside,” recalled the elder woman.

Her daughter finally gave in and let the accused back inside.

However, the fighting continued, even after the mother had retired to her room.

“I’ll kill you,” the accused allegedly threatened her daughter as the “shouting and noise” went on. 

Later Lourdes had checked on her mother asking, “Ma alright?”

The other woman replied that she was about to sleep and reassured Lourdes that she was not in pain. 

Midway through the night, the mother woke up, sensing that the place was “quiet, quiet, quiet”.

She needed to go to the bathroom but was scared to leave her room as she heard the accused moving up and down the stairs leading to the roof.

When she finally headed to the bathroom, she locked herself inside and afterwards went back to bed and slept, her medication taking effect. 

Next morning, September 15, she entered the kitchen to prepare some coffee and biscuits for breakfast.

Her daughter, who would normally be up and about early to bottle feed her younger children, was nowhere in sight but the accused was preparing a bottle for the baby. 

“Get dressed and go out,” he snapped.

“Lourdes is not here. She went out shopping,” he added. 

But the woman did not believe him, explaining that she “looked at his face and knew that he had done something”.

So she slipped into her daughter’s bedroom and saw her figure lying in bed facing the wall, almost completely covered with a sheet.

“I uncovered her legs. Her thighs felt cold…She was cold, yes cold.”

Later, as she looked out onto the street from her room, she spotted a “black van with a cross” while people out on the street called out to her saying, “he [the accused] killed your Lourdes”.

“Mike” sat on the doorstep of a nearby commercial establishment, holding the baby. 

“I could not speak because of the shock. I did not speak to him,” went on the witness as she recalled the arrival of the police and people “dressed in white”, [scene of crime officers] who advised her to get dressed and “go to her family.” 

Throughout her lengthy testimony the witness spoke slowly and softly, never once looking in the accused’s direction. 

When asked to identify “Mike” she shook her head, refusing to look back at the man seated in the dock. 

“Could you at least point him out,” urged the prosecuting lawyer. 

But the witness broke down in tears, feebly pointing a finger over her shoulder as her loud sobs shattered the silence. 

It took quite a while for the mother to regain composure and when she did so, she continued to testify sitting on a chair beside the witness stand. 

'He beat us up'

The victim’s brother also testified.

He initially thought that his sister had found “someone she loved”.

But he soon realised that that was not so.

“I saw my sister’s bruises and when she called, she’d tell me that she was unhappy,” said John Agius.

Asked about the accused’s relationship with his mother, the witness described it as “not too good”.

His mum used to tell him that “Mike” would spill her tea on her or throw her mug on the floor “out of spite”.

Observing his mother and sister’s visible signs of injury, he would urge them to order “Mike” out of their home. 

The Paola flat belonged to him and his sister but the first time he met the accused they had agreed that Michael was to fix the property to make it more habitable. 

However, when he visited some time later, he realised that the place was in a worse state than before. 

Two days before the murder, Lourdes called him.

“He beat us up,” she explained, asking him to go over. 

When he arrived outside the flat, he saw an ambulance and two police cars as well as his mother, blood on her forehead, who was being helped into the ambulance.

The accused had allegedly pushed her down a flight of stairs and had also allegedly hit his sister with a heavy chair “big enough to almost break her back”.

The witness subsequently changed the locks to the flat after the police advised him to do so. 

The trial continues on Wednesday. An onsite visit to the crime scene was held on Tuesday afternoon. 

Mr Justice Aaron Bugeja is presiding. AG lawyers Anthony Vella and Maria Francesca Spiteri are prosecuting. Lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace is legal aid counsel to the accused. Lawyers Lara Dimitrijevic and Stephanie Caruana assisted the victim's family.