Nicolette Ghirxi could still be alive if the police had done their job instead of allowing her murderer to toy with them, her lawyer has said.

Edward Johnston mocked the police when police summoned him for questioning last April, telling them he was abroad to “top up my tan" in Dubai and challenging them to “notify Interpol” if they wanted to speak to him.

Those email exchanges, published on Wednesday by Ghirxi’s lawyer Joseph Borda, date back to April. Ghirxi had told police that her ex-boyfriend was harassing her.

Ghirxi was found stabbed to death at 2am on Monday night. Johnston was shot dead hours later after he pointed a gun – later discovered to be a replica – at the police.

Speaking to Times of Malta, Borda said police had failed to adequately protect Ghirxi by not acting on harassment reports she had been filing since April. They could have also acted after he ignored their requests to interrogate him, the lawyer added.

“The crimes that were allegedly committed by Johnston are punishable by jail.  Had they issued an arrest warrant, she could have still been alive,” he said.

“How could the police tell her there was nothing they could do?” he asked.

He said that the police had “allowed Johnston to toy with them and play the fool”.

Ghirxi and Johnston had been together for 18 months, but Johnston broke off the relationship last December.

Borda, who had known Ghirxi for 30 years, started legally representing her last April, when fake social media profiles run by Johnston started posting personal information about her.

She reported those posts to the police, filing reports with the force’s Gender Based and Domestic Violence Section.

Email exchanges published by the lawyer indicate Johnston was not too concerned about that.

Police told Johnston to visit the Police HQ in Floriana “to be spoken about a report filed against you”.

Johnston replied, writing as his business persona 'Edward Sambora': “As I already informed you, its [sic] not possible to attend, tell the judge I am on a business trip”.

“You will just have to red flag me and notify Interpol,” Johnston challenged the Malta Police.

“I want to top up my tan in Dubai before I come back to Malta,” he ended one message.

Edward Johnston's email exchanges with the Malta Police

On April 23, Johnston also told the police that he was about to get on a flight to Dubai, “so I will have to take a rain check, on your 48hrs notice interview”.

Johnston proposed an online meeting.  

“You fancy doing a zoom call instead???” he quipped.

He also hinted he would be back in Malta “in July, for some fun in the sun”.

Edward Johnston's email exchanges with the Malta Police

It is understood that Johnston returned to Malta in the first or second week of August.  

Last Thursday, a few days before Ghirxi was murdered, she told the police that her Tinder account marked that Edward Johnston was just a few kilometres away.

Police have since said that Ghirxi did not want them to take legal action against Johnston.

Her lawyer says that is not true.

“It is not true that she had signed papers whereby she did not want to proceed against him.  Had this been true she would not have informed the police about his presence in Malta,” he said.

During a crime conference last Monday, the police also said that Ghirxi had declined, in writing, to take a domestic violence risk assessment, saying that she did not feel at risk at that moment in time.

Borda believes people in similar situations to her should be made to take a risk assessment by default.

He said Ghirxi, who he considered a friend, “could not take it any longer”.

Police could have saved her life by issuing an arrest warrant against Johnston, he said, because had they done so he would have been arrested the moment he landed in Malta.

Had they issued an international arrest warrant, he would have been arrested abroad and brought to Malta to face justice, he added.

But the system failed Nicolette, Borda said.

In the first reactions from Ghirxi's family, they told Times of Malta earlier this week that she had reported the posts to the police, who did not consider them life-threatening.  

“We don’t know what they could have done, to be honest," the family member, who asked not to be named, had said on Monday, in the hours after the murder.

Meanwhile, sources close to the investigation have told Times of Malta that they have managed to establish that Nicolette Ghirxi’s killer is the same man involved in two separate police stand-offs in Glasgow and Liverpool within a week in 2012.

Johnston threatened to kill people and pointed a replica Uzi machine gun at police in Liverpool in February 2012, and one week later made a bomb threat in a Glasgow restaurant in 2012, sparking a lengthy stand-off with police.

In a statement, the Maltese police said they could not comment on allegations of Johnston using fake social media profiles given that an investigation into the case is ongoing.