More horrifying details emerged yesterday of the 2004 San Ġwann murder, when pictures of Josette Scicluna's body showing the 49 wounds she suffered were presented to jurors - shocking one of them into leaving the courtroom.

The victim's terrible injuries stood in stark contrast to that of her alleged murderer David Schembri, 32, who only scratched his finger and is now facing a potential life sentence for a murder he denies.

"She was subject to extreme trauma in the moments before her death," court expert Mario Scerri said after showing the jury the autopsy pictures that left nothing to the imagination.

Just before Dr Scerri testified, the pictures flashed across a screen, showing her lifeless body - littered with cuts - on the autopsy table.

The only female member of the jury could not take it and walked up to the judge asking to be excused. She was granted the request but was replaced, as is standard procedure, by a reserve juror, which now makes it a full male panel.

When the explanation of the photos began, the accused lowered his head and covered his eyes only to fall asleep a number of times throughout the day.

Photos of the inside of Ms Scicluna's flat portrayed a scene of intense violence. Mr Schembri allegedly shot at the door five times, entered the living room and stabbed her in her kitchen, leaving her there to bleed to death.

A trail of blood started in the living room and led up to a pool of blood in the kitchen where Ms Scicluna was caught in a corner between the fridge and the wall unable to escape the relentless attack. The wounds on her hands were compatible with defensive motions as she struggled with the aggressor, Dr Scerri said.

On the kitchen table lay a plate of food which was being eaten by their seven-year-old daughter with a piece of broccoli still on the fork.

Professor Marie Therese Camilleri and Dr Ali Safraz, who carried out the autopsy, said that two of the nine scalp wounds that the victim suffered were deep enough to penetrate the skin while one of them penetrated the outer layer of the skull. In all, she lost between 20 and 25 per cent of the total amount of blood that goes through the heart.

The broken blade lay inches away from where neighbours who witnessed the attack found Ms Scicluna lying on the floor in the blood-spattered kitchen.

The court heard the evidence of Ms Scicluna's father. "I had three daughters but now I only have two," he said as he was being procedurally asked for his personal details by the prosecution.

Mr Scicluna said his daughter was very scared of the accused, suggesting that the accused used to beat her up. He said Mr Schembri had even broken her nose when she was just three months pregnant.

The two had met when she was 22 and their relationship was fine at first but then it was all downhill from there. "The abuse continued right up until the end."

As Mr Scicluna was testifying the accused shook himself out of his slouch and sat up alert. He paid close attention to what the father was saying, at times letting out a snigger of disbelief.

Before Mr Scicluna testified, a video recording was shown of the couple's daughter who told what she saw during the first part of the attack before she was snatched from the scene of crime by a neighbour.

The girl, then just seven years old, said that her father first attacked her mother with a chair after he broke into the house by shooting at the door. This detail conflicts with the version given by Mr Schembri in a police statement in which he said that he had started beating his former partner after she charged at him with "something in her hands".

The girl recounted that after shooting the door down, her father chased Ms Scicluna into the kitchen only to emerge, pick up a chair and go after her a second time.

She added that she heard her mother saying "leave me alone" while in the kitchen.

The accused also took the witness stand yesterday. He said the two had met when they went to Gozo with a group of friends adding that after that "wherever I went I found her there".

He said that after just six months of going out with her she got pregnant and they found a place to live that needed doing up. Ms Scicluna and her father were chasing him to finish off the flat.

Mr Justice Galea Debono interjected: "Don't you think it was because she had the baby and needed a place to live?" To which he replied, "It could be".

The relationship did not last very long however. A short time after moving in she went back to her father's house following an argument, before renting a flat for herself in San Ġwann.

Mr Schembri told the court he had an argument with her father who then asked him to guarantee that he would not speak to him or his daughter.

The accused refused in the case of Ms Scicluna but did not have a problem in the case of her father, who even filed a court case to obtain the guarantee only for Mr Schembri not to appear.

On the day in question, Ms Scicluna had a pair of leather trousers that belonged to him and which he wanted back. But neither she nor her father were answering their mobile phones so he walked all the way to San Ġwann from Sliema.

He went there carrying a revolver and 20 bullets which, he explained, was because he scared of Mr Scicluna.

"I knocked on the door and she didn't want to open. I shot at the door and saw her coming at me with the knife and I lost it after that, I blanked."

Breaking down into tears he said he loved her and still loves her but insisted he could not remember stabbing her, repeating the denial he had given earlier even when confronted with pictures of the crime scene.

But when he was pressed by the prosecution he said he remembered stabbing her once. As his version changed, he told the court that he had always thought that "a man who beat a woman was gay", adding "I never intended to kill her".

The prosecution then produced evidence showing that he beat her up three times over a period of about a year and a half, to which Mr Schembri just smiled, chuckled and denied everything.

He said that on the day she was murdered, the argument was just a misunderstanding in the "heat of the moment".

The case continues.

Anthony Barbara, head of the Prosecution Unit at the Attorney General's Office, prosecuted assisted by lawyer Lara Lanfranco.

Lawyers Emmanuel Mallia, Gianella Caruana Curran and Arthur Azzopardi appeared parte civile while Joseph Brincat appeared for Mr Schembri.