Karin Grech’s family has not been contacted by the inquiring magistrate for at least five years, the brother of the murdered teenager charged on Wednesday, questioning whether an inquiry is being carried out at all.

Kevin Grech, who was only 10 years old and present when his sister of 15 was blown up as she opened a letter bomb at their San Ġwann home, questioned: “What inquiry?”

He interrupted a difficult day of mourning on the 45th anniversary of Karin’s murder to slam the magistrate on the case, saying he did not even know if a new one had been appointed or who he or she was, adding it was “shameful” he had never been contacted.

“There was and there should be a magisterial inquiry but where is it?”

Karin Grech.

His father, Edwin Grech, the target of the bomb that was motivated by the medico-political unrest in 1977, has been indisposed and in an old people’s home for four years and was already poorly before then, he said.

“He does not even recognise me and my mother lives alone in Gozo. No one has contacted a single person in at least five years, though I dare say even six or seven.

“This is a long time,” Grech said in a rare outpouring about how he expected and was waiting to be called up by the magistrate.

“Call me and tell me…,” he appealed, adding that if the magistrate was not interested in the case and did not want to do the job, they should just leave.

Kevin Grech, who was 10 at the time, kissing the coffin of his sister Karin after the 1977 letter bomb murder. PHOTO: Frank Attard

He questioned what this person – “who is in charge and getting paid for it” – had done in five years.

Karin’s murder happened at the height of the doctors’ strike, during which her father continued to work at St Luke’s Hospital when asked by the government to run its obstetrics and gynaecology department.

Among the few Maltese doctors who refused to strike, he was working as a consultant in the UK at the time and had agreed to return to Malta to fulfil the role until the industrial dispute ended.

Three days after Christmas, on December 28, 1977, at 12.30pm, the parcel bomb – a brown envelope containing a package on Christmas wrapping – arrived at the family home, killing the young woman.

A crime still unsolved

Since then, her father had made a monthly appointment with the police commissioner to follow up the case, his son said.

Often, these meetings were cancelled and commissioners changed “like underwear and socks”, he continued.

The police used to brush him off but he had persisted, trying to get information “on the side and from the underworld”.

To date, the crime that rocked the nation has remained unsolved.

No one was ever charged and convicted with Karin’s murder and the case turned into a political football.

It is suspected the explosive device had been planned by fourth- and fifth-year medical students, who hired an expert to make it, although it was maintained it was the work of a single student too.

On the eve of the anniversary, Karin’s cousin, Opposition Leader Bernard Grech, pointed at “no tangible effort” to conclude the unresolved case.

Facing a difficult day, during which he preferred to be alone, and which was characterised by routine rituals related to his sister’s murder, the brother, a private person, chose to speak out, irked by the fact that the inquiry seemed to be shut down.

'Lots of promises from many sides'

“We are still awaiting justice after 45 years, following lots of promises from both sides – from many sides.

“This is a country that is accepting that crimes happen without being solved,” he said.

Christmas was “not a happy time”, Karin’s brother said, speaking of the family’s hurt.

This was not just due to the injustice and the waiting but also about the fact that “power and money” resulted in the loss of evidence from police files.

"After 45 years, what do you want me to say? Hopefully, someone will come forward"- Kevin Grech

To add insult to injury, evidence had gone missing from the law courts, he claimed yesterday, stressing the seriousness of this.

He was referring to a judicial protest the Grech family filed in 2017 against the attorney general, the police commissioner and the director general of courts after crucial evidence – pieces of the envelope that had contained the bomb – allegedly vanished.

Edwin Grech, who went on to become a Labour MP and social security minister in the 1990s, had said he had little hope the case would be solved.

Asked whether he was still hopeful that the murder would be resolved, his son said: “After 45 years, what do you want me to say? Hopefully, someone will come forward.

“The reality is that you open the newspapers every day, everywhere, and this is the world we now live in.”

He said that he has learnt how to deal with the tragedy and has moved on. But it lived with him every day, while the case was only talked about once a year and then buried again until another journalist would ask him another question the next year.

He said everyone wanted justice – not just himself, but all the Maltese.