Two men accused of murdering a woman in a neighbouring apartment in Cork were heard whispering in their flat before she was killed and were seen leaving the block afterwards, a court heard yesterday.
A Garda ballistics specialist also told the court a piece of electrical cable used to strangle the victim, which was found in a courtyard outside the apartment shared by the two accused, belonged to a lamp found in the victim's bedroom.
The Central Criminal Court heard that Mr Thomas Penkert (21) and Mr Brian Walsh (22) were seen leaving the Leitrim Street flats - which one resident described as a "dangerous place" - two hours after Ms Nora Kiely (46), was strangled.
Ms Kiely - described in court as a private person - was found strangled in her flat, naked from the waist down with a small black-handled knife under her hand.
The court heard that Mr Penkert and Mr Walsh were living in a flat in the block and were heard whispering "excessively" that night by the tenant in the adjacent flat, Mr Sean Feeley. He said the apartments were dangerous flats in a dangerous area and many "weird" things happened on the night Ms Kiely was killed. He said he spoke to Mr Penkert and Mr Walsh in the doorway of their flat for up to an hour on the night before he returned to his own flat and tried unsuccessfully to hear what they were saying through his flat's "paper-thin" wall.
Asked by counsel for Mr Walsh, Ms Niamh Stewart, why he wanted to hear what was said, Mr Feeley said the flats were the kind of place where "you have to keep your head or you are not going to be alive any longer".
Mr Penkert and Mr Walsh have pleaded not guilty to Ms Kiely's murder. But they have both admitted robbing Ms Kiely of less than €20 in cash and two items of jewellery.
The trial continues today.