A murdered German journalist, Ms Bettina Poeschel, may have been killed and later dumped and hidden in dense undergrowth, a murder trial jury heard at the Central Criminal Court yesterday.
The former State pathologist, Prof John Harbison, told the court it was his opinion that Ms Poeschel was not murdered at the scene where she was found but that her body had been dumped there afterwards.
"It is my hunch that, in view of its location, [the body] could have been thrown there. It's possible that someone could have been force-marched in there, but the impression to me was the person was dumped there," he told the jury.
He said the location of the body in a dark, densely vegetated copse "was not the place where a young lady would go on invitation. So it did strike me that this was a dumped body, that the murder did not take place there," he told Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, defending.
Prof Harbison was giving evidence at the murder trial of Mr Michael Murphy (42), from Drogheda, Co Louth. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the 28-year-old woman on a date between September 25th and October 17th, 2001, at Donore, Co Meath.
Cross-examined by Mr MacEntee, Prof Harbison said the vegetation looked undisturbed and overgrown. "That suggests to me the body had lain there for a week or two. The ivy had grown over the leg, he told the jury.
When asked by Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, if Ms Poeschel's remains could have been there from the day of her disappearance to the day she was found, Prof Harbison replied: "In autumn weather, yes".
"I was unable to find the cause of death," Prof Harbison told Mr Vaughan Buckley.
"The decomposed state of the organs was such that I could not see any major injury. There was no evidence of head injury, no question of any stabbing in the abdomen".
Prof Harbison said he returned to the spot where the body was found the next day to try to find some missing neck vertebrae and the larynx, which could have provided vital evidence.
While he found the missing vertebrae, he could not find the larynx and concluded it had been removed by scavenging wildlife.
He said the complete detachment of the skull from the body was also due to disturbance by wildlife.
In his conclusion, Prof Harbison said death from natural causes would be most unlikely. "She was in good health. The only likely cause of death was from some sort of an assault upon her," he said.
Earlier Det Garda Thomas Carey, a forensic expert, described the condition of the body upon discovery as "skeletal" in parts.
The trial continues today