Two days after a schoolgirl's body was found on a Co Galway foreshore, the man accused of her murder and rape told a friend he was talking to her on the night she died, a Central Criminal Court jury has been told.
The court was told by a former friend of the defendant of a phone conversation they had two days after the killing. At one stage the youth was himself arrested as part of the Garda investigation into the girl's rape and murder.
A pub doorman also told the jury yesterday that he refused the girl entry to a village pub on the night she died, because she was under age. She was last seen at around 12:45 or 12:50 a.m. outside the pub after leaving a friend's car to go to the toilet.
The accused, a 26-year-old man from Co Galway who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the 17-year-old schoolgirl and to two counts of rape early on December 6th, 1998.
Her body was found on rocks on a foreshore near the village later that day.
In evidence, a former friend of the accused said he saw him twice on the night of the killing.
He saw him again on the afternoon of Sunday, December 6th, in a local pub, and noticed scratch marks on both arms.
Two days later, the youth said, he phoned the defendant, who asked him first if gardai had spoken to him and then what questions they had asked. The defendant went on to say that he had an alibi for his car, because it was parked outside the local hotel all night.
"He told me he was talking to [the deceased] that night. He said [she] approached him and said, `Howya' and he said `Howya' back, and she said, `You don't remember me, do you?', and he said, `No, I don't' ".
The witness said he asked the defendant if he had told the gardai, and he said No. The youth then said to him wasn't it terrible what had happened to her, and expressed the view that "it must have been a local".
The defendant had said, "No, no, not necessarily", and remarked that there would have been a lot of people around. The trial continues before Mr Justice Smith today.