Updated at 2.08pm

Joseph Bonnici, the man accused of the double murder in Għaxaq last month had planned the crime down to the very last detail, building his own makeshift gun and buying a pressure washer to clean up the mess, police inspectors told a court on Monday.

The 38-year-old murdered mother and sister on Tuesday March 26, and then got back into bed.

Prosecutors explained how Mr Bonnici had prepared for the murder, executed it and then reported the two women missing to police before crumbling under the pressure of interrogation.

The Għaxaq man faces charges of having shot his mother Maria Lourdes and sister Angele and dumped their bodies in a field. It was the second double murder in the immediate family’s history: his father, Paul Bonnici, is serving time for having killed a couple who lived next door.

Signs of premeditation

Inspector Keith Arnaud told the court how Joseph Bonnici had picked that Tuesday in March as the day to kill his mother and sister because his girlfriend was due to return home late. It was raining, and that would help wash away evidence of the crime, the inspector added.

Mr Bonnici intentionally shorted a switch to trigger his home’s circuit breaker, then called his sister over from next door, where she lived with their mother, under the pretext that he needed her help to fix the electrical fault.

Angele Bonnici.

He had built his own silenced gun, Inspector Arnaud said, and he used that to shoot his sister Angele as her back was turned. Angele fell; he reloaded and shot her again. She continued to gurgle, and Mr Bonnici reached for a sledgehammer, smashing her head to make sure she was dead.

With his sister killed, he called his mother over, again using the electrical fault as an excuse. As she walked ahead of him, he shot her in the head.

With his sister killed, he called his mother over, again using the electric fault as an excuse

Angele Bonnici was shot twice in the head. His mother, Maria Lourdes,was shot once. Both were unrecognisable due to their injuries, the court was told.

As both women lay dead, Mr Bonnici wrapped their bleeding heads in garbage bags and dragged their bodies into his car, using a metal sheet to make it easier to move the bodies.

A wheelbarrow, which Mr Bonnici had covered in clingfilm and equipped with heavy-duty tyres, was resting in the car's back seat. 

He then went to bed and pretended to be asleep as he waited for his girlfriend to return home. Later that night, he got up and drove the corpses to a field, using the wheelbarrow to cart the two to his chosen burial spot. There, he covered their bodies with lime.

When police officers found the bodies, garbage bags were still tied around both women’s heads. The mother had a small pouch containing €4,500 close to her chest.

Police suspicions

Prosecutors said Mr Bonnici, who had initially reported his mother and sister missing, confessed to the crime after being interrogated by the police.

 “I made a mess, it’s a mess,” [Ħerba għamilt, ħerba hemm]  he told them.

He told police how he had killed the two, where he had buried them and how he had gotten rid of items used in the crime. Officers recorded Mr Bonnici’s confession.

Mr Bonnici told investigators he had burnt the sacks he had used to carry the bodies and bought a pressure washer to wash away traces of blood.

He had also burnt his sister's mobile phone and a lantern his mother was holding when he had shot her. 

Police scour the area where the bodies were found. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

Mr Bonnici first claimed he had thrown the gun away, but later recanted and showed them where he had buried it. He dumped the sledgehammer at a WasteServ skip in Għaxaq. Investigators found the sledgehammer weighing more than 6kg and with an iron handle, which they believe was the one used by Mr Bonnici.

Police found his Daewoo parked in a parking bay for the disabled on Saturday March 30 at 6am in Żejtun.

Mr Bonnici owned several licensed weapons, including a hunting shotgun, but had opted against using those to kill his relatives because they did not have a silencer. The firearm he built, on the other hand, did.

Long-standing resentment                             

Investigators say Mr Bonnici’s had long harboured resentment against his two relatives, blaming his mother for having needled their father into killing two of their neigbours more than a decade ago and suspecting that his sister was plotting to have him sent to jail.

The senior Bonnici’s double murder was not the only horrific episode in the family’s history. Around a decade ago, an ex-girlfriend of Joseph Bonnici’s had died by suicide, the court heard.

Mr Bonnici’s current girlfriend testified that she knew of that death, and that the ex and her mother-in-law, Maria Lourdes, had not gotten along.

A suicide note she had written to Mr Bonnici had made reference to those tensions, the inspector told the court. 

Inspector John Spiteri told the court that he had received reports that Angele Bonnici had spoken of having been sexually abused by her brother in the past.

Later in the sitting, Mr Bonnici’s own girlfriend told the court how Angele had once told her that he had “touched her” when they were younger. The family mother, Maria Lourdes, knew about this, she had said.

Joseph Bonnici had denied ever abusing his sister.

Mr Bonnici’s girlfriend recounted a disconcerting episode early in their relationship, around nine years ago.

Angele - who was eight years younger than Joseph - had taken off her clothes in front of both of them to show him a pimple.   

She found this disconcerting, but Joseph had insisted there was nothing unusual or untoward, she told the court.

A father’s suspicions

Inspector Spiteri told the court how, one day after the two women had been reported missing, prison authorities told him that the accused's father, Paul Bonnici, wanted to speak to the police.

Mr Bonnici is serving time for having killed a couple who lived next door to them in 2000, with a long-standing feud between the two families having come to a head when the Bonnicis accused them of having stolen clothes hanging out to dry.

The father was aware that there was tension between his son and daughter, Inspector Spiteri told the court. He called home every morning, and it was unusual for his wife to not let him know she was going out.

Mr Bonnici had recently been ordered to pay €80,000 in damages by a civil court, but thought it highly unlikely that his wife and daughter would have fled the island to get out of paying that.

Joseph Bonnici had visited his father in jail that Thursday and told him he did not know of his mother and sister's whereabouts.

He had then visited his sister Angele’s workplace to ask if they had seen her, and from there gone to police to file a missing persons report.

When police visited the Bonnici home, they noted a strong smell of kerosene. The suspect, Joseph Bonnici, told officers that he used kerosene as a flea repellent.

Uncashed cheques lay in Angele Bonnici’s room. Maria Lourdes’ mobile phone was there, as well as some gold jewellery. Neither of the two had made any phone calls since the previous evening.

People who last spoke to the mother and daughter had not noticed anything untoward about them. CCTV footage from previous days showed them in pyjamas, acting normally.

The cameras went offline at 9pm on the day of the murder, and resumed operations the next day.

‘We all led separate lives’ - girlfriend

Mr Bonnici’s girlfriend told the court that her boyfriend had kept telling her “sorry” over and over again when she spoke to him at Żejtun police station.

When she discovered what had happened, she had collapsed in shock.

The two had been living together in Mr Bonnici’s home for the past nine years. Although his mother and sister lived on the same plot of land, they rarely visited – usually only when the family’s father visited from prison.

Apart from that, they only met by chance on the roof or in the garage, Ms Bonnici told the court.

“It wasn’t a very close relationship,” she said. “We all led separate lives but were ready to help each other out”.  

She and her boyfriend did not really discuss the family’s dark past, she told the court. 

"Joseph is the quiet type. He's not one to talk unless asked, and I didn't ask much," she said. 

She described her boyfriend as “the most amazing person I know” and told the court that he had lifted her out of an abusive relationship in her past.

“He always respected and loved me. He was always calm and gentle and he was never aggressive, not even with our pets”.

As she sang his praises, the bespectacled Mr Bonnici, who had spent the hearing sitting silently, began to sob.

The compilation of evidence before Magistrate Joseph Mifsud will resume on April 15.

Inspector Keith Arnaud is prosecuting. Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri are counsel for the defence.