The Co Antrim man accused of murdering Ms Bernie Martin (18) with the gun used to shoot taxidriver Michael McGoldrick a year earlier, threatened to shoot himself with the same pistol, it was claimed yesterday. Ms Martin, a Catholic, was murdered in the Soldierstown Road home of her Protestant boyfriend, Mr Gordon Green, in the Co Antrim village of Aghalee. She was shot once in the head and several times in the hand as she tried to shield herself from the lone gunman who walked into the bedroom where she slept with her boyfriend in the early hours of July 15th, 1997. A neighbour of the Green family, Mr Trevor James Leslie McKeown (37), from Coronation Gardens, denies murdering her using what the prosecution claim, was the same Spanish .22 pistol used to kill Mr McGoldrick a year earlier in July 1996.
Hours before the shooting of Ms Martin, Mr McKeown had threatened to shoot himself with the gun according to Ms Lynn Green, a sister of Ms Martin's boyfriend. She told Belfast Crown Court that Mr McKeown approached her in the Institute Club in Lurgan and told her "I'm going to get the gun that shot McGoldrick and shoot myself". She said Mr McKeown was drunk and that she told him "to stop talking crap".
Later under cross-examination by Mr Eugene Grant QC, Ms Green denied inventing the story because she wanted to be the centre of attention and in revenge for Mr McKeown having spurned her. She admitted that she had had a schoolgirl crush on Mr McKeown and that she'd thought the world of him, but denied that about a month before the shooting Mr McKeown had told her to wise up when she'd kissed him as he lay dozing on a settee.
Earlier yesterday, while opening the prosecution case against Mr McKeown, prosecuting QC Mr John Creaney claimed the same Spanish Star Lancer pistol used in the "vicious and determined" murder of Ms Martin was also used to kill Mr McGoldrick. Lord Justice McCollum was told it was the prosecution case that Mr McKeown shot Ms Martin in a drunken rage as she slept with her boyfriend. The judge was also told that while the case was based largely on circumstantial evidence, "strand after strand in this case points to McKeown being the killer of this unfortunate young woman".
During interview Mr McKeown admitted going to the Green home in the early hours of the morning for some "drink and craic" with Mr Green, with whom he was very friendly. He also allegedly told detectives he let himself in by a backdoor, but soon left the house and denied shooting Ms Martin. "If that were to be so," said Mr Creaney, "his is a very unlucky and unhappy situation, because someone else went into that room and shot Ms Martin."
Mr Creaney also claimed that when police went to Mr McKeown's home on the morning of the shooting he was found naked in a bath washing his hair over a running cold tap. They also discovered a jacket, shirt, jersey and a balaclava being washed in a washing machine, which the prosecution claim was to wash any firearms residue from them. The pistol used in the shooting, together with 30 rounds of ammunition was discovered in a potato field 150 yards from Mr McKeown's home. The trial continues today.