THE WOMAN accused of bludgeoning her elderly neighbour to death with a crucifix took the stand yesterday and swore, “I could not have been any nicer to Mrs Rankin.”
Giving evidence at Belfast Crown Court on her own behalf, Dublin pharmacist Karen Walsh (45) claimed that when she left the home of Maire Rankin in the early hours of Christmas Day 2008, her breathing was wheezy but “she was fine in that she was still alive”.
Defence lawyer Peter Irvine put a series of questions to her, asking if at any stage while she was visiting her 81-year-old neighbour she had assaulted her, sexually interfered with her, forcibly pulled her hair, had an argument with her or went back in to attack her.
As her voice faltered with emotion, Ms Walsh replied: “No I did not . . . I could not have been any nicer to Mrs Rankin. She was the nicest person you could meet.”
Ms Walsh, originally from Galway but with an address on the Dublin Road in Newry, denies murdering her next-door neighbour.
The jury has already heard it is the crown case that Ms Walsh beat her to death, thrust the crown of thorns on a crucifix into her face and sexually assaulted her, and that she is linked to the scene, the crucifix and Mrs Rankin’s body by DNA evidence.
They also heard Mrs Rankin died as a result of being beaten around the head and sustaining 15 fractured ribs, coupled with her underlying medical conditions of hypertension and chronic asthma.
Following the end of the prosecution case against her, Mr Irvine told the packed courtroom, “I would propose to call Karen Walsh”.
After outlining how she completed her pharmacy degree at Sunderland College and her “pre reg” in Camlough, Ms Walsh told the jury she had been married to accountant Richard Durkin for seven years and they had a son together. The couple bought the house next door to Mrs Rankin in November 2007, “just to get away from Dublin”, where she owned a pharmacy on George’s Street.
Asked how well she knew her neighbour, Ms Walsh said Mrs Rankin was a “lovely, lovely person” whom she had spoken to three or four times over the course of the year when she and her family spent weekends in Newry.
Ms Walsh told the court how they came up the day before Christmas Eve and that late in the evening of December 24th, she went to call to a neighbour’s house but when she thought they were out, went to Mrs Rankin ’s to deliver a Christmas card.
Mrs Rankin , she said, buzzed her in using the intercom and she “literally followed her voice” to the upstairs bedroom where she found the pensioner sitting in a rocking chair wearing a dressing gown with a duvet pulled around her.
Still carrying a bottle of vodka intended as a gift for the neighbours who were out, Ms Walsh said they hugged and kissed before she helped Mrs Rankin to the bed to use her nebuliser mask as Mrs Rankin was “very, very wheezy”.
As the women chatted, Ms Walsh told Mr Irvine she drank some of the vodka neat from the bottle. “I know it seems terrible and horrendous now but it was Christmas time and she was fine about it.”
She claimed that, worried about Mrs Rankin ’s breathing, she went downstairs to look for an inhaler. Describing how she debated with herself in the livingroom about whether to stay or invite Mrs Rankin into her house, she said: “I saw how much effort it took for us to get from the chair to the bed and I was worried that if I wasn’t there she would not be able to do it on her own in case she needed to go to the toilet or anything.”
Ms Walsh said her neighbour “actually thought about it for a minute” but told her no, her family was coming early in the morning. Asked what time she left, Ms Walsh said she thought it was “about 2 o’clock or so”.
She denied making any phonecalls from Mrs Rankin ’s landline. She also denied touching any of the phones, figurines found at the top of the stairs, a vanity case used to store medication found open on the kitchen floor or the remote control for Mrs Rankin ’s stair lift.