MARTA HERDA MURDER TRIAL CONTINUES CLOSING SPEECHES MADE – NOW JURY VERDICT AWAITED

DURING the prosecutor’s closing speech on Wednesday, the Central Criminal Court jury was told that a car driven into the sea in 2013 was used ‘as an instrument of murder’.

Marta Herda of Pairc Na Saile, Emoclew Road, Arklow, Co Wicklow, is charged with the murder of 31-year-old Csaba Orsos on March 26, 2013.

The 29-year-old Polish waitress has pleaded not guilty to murdering the Hungarian at South Quay, Arklow.

Both had been in Ms Herda’s car when it went into the water that morning. Ms Herda escaped at the harbour but Mr Orsos’ body was found on a nearby beach later that day.

They had worked together, he was in love with her, but she didn’t feel the same way. She told gardaí he had spent two years following her, phoning her and sending her messages.

Brendan Grehan SC, prosecuting, said that the prosecution’s contention was simple and straightforward, that Ms Herda had deliberately driven into the water.

‘Whether she did it on the spur of the moment or thought about it beforehand is irrelevant,’ he said, explaining that the intention for murder could be formed at the time.

‘Someone overheating, losing the run of themselves can commit murder,’ he explained.

He said that the prosecution case relied to a large extent on circumstantial evidence.

‘In this case, it’s the prosecution’s contention that a car driven into the sea was used, in effect, as an instrument of murder,’ he said.

He said that, as well as having the facts, the jury could draw inferences.

‘If you see a door wide open in a house in the early hours of a morning…You might well think that person, whenever they went out through the door, must not have intended to go away, but must have intended to come back in,’ he said.

The court heard that Mr Orsos’s front door was found open after the incident.

Mr Grehan said the CCTV evidence showed Ms Herda’s car driving from the direction of her home towards the area where Mr Orsos lived around 5.30 a.m. that day. It was not in dispute that Ms Herda was the driver and was alone.

‘(She’s) driving slowly, doesn’t appear to be driving dangerously,’ he said.

He noted that an eyewitness said the woman was on the phone and animated.

He said the next footage was captured at 6 a.m. near the lifeboat station. It showed a woman from the direction of the harbour wall.

He said that critical phone evidence showed that Ms Herda rang the deceased three times that morning. ‘She’s last on the phone to Csaba Orsos at 5.37 a.m.,’ he said.

He noted that a night watchmen heard a car driving at speed down the quays around 5.50 a.m.

‘Within a very short piece of time, 15 minutes at tops, maybe even less, she’s speaking to him by phone and he’s in the water, never to come back,’ he said. ‘ That timeframe is very important.’

He mentioned that a brakemark, measuring 13 foot 6 inches, was found at the scene.

‘It was brought about as the result of a hand brake applied in the car,’ he noted. ‘We don’t know who applied the handbrake, but we do know that it, like in most cars, was between the passenger and driver seat.’

He noted that the driver’s window was the only one down.

He reminded the jury that Ms Herda was found soaking wet in very light clothing on a bitterly cold night when it was snowing.

He also pointed out that Ms Herda was a good swimmer and knew that Csaba Orsos could not swim.

He then moved on to Marta Herda’s own words.

‘He shouldn’t have been there. I drove the car into the water,’ she told a paramedic that morning.

‘He didn’t think I’d do it,’ she told a nurse.

A doctor had asked if she knew what would happen when she went into the water. He said she nodded and said that she knew he couldn’t swim.

Mr Grehan read out the two statements she made to gardaí that day.

‘Csaba came to my car. He wanted to talk,’ she said. ‘He told me to drive to the beach. He was angry all the time shouting… I drove fast… I remember I turn and not go for beach. I remember I hit accelerator. I think I have enough of this. I have enough him. I can no longer take this. All I see is his angry face and screaming. I know that I drive to water. I can’t take it any more.’

Mr Grehan drew the jury’s attention to a card that the deceased had given Ms Herda.

‘If somebody is effectively stalking you, is that the Valentine card that you keep and you’re in a position to hand over straight away to gardaí?’ he asked.

He said that one of the key questions in the case was how Mr Orsos came to be in the car with her.

‘ There is such a convenient loss of memory as to that critical matter,’ he said. ‘She claimed to the gardaí that she can’t remember how he came to be in her car or even phoning him, but she can remember everything up to that.’

‘Why was she calling to his house, ringing him at 5.20 in the morning, getting him into the car, driving off and he’s in the sea 10 minutes later?’ he asked. ‘I suggest that’s why there’s no answer.’

‘ To suggest that Csaba Orsos somehow got into her car without her enticing him into the car is simply not a tenable suggestion,’ he said.

‘Within minutes, for no justifiable reason, she decides she’s had enough and she’s driving off the pier wall,’ he said.

He pointed to photographs of ‘ the demolition’ of two harbour barriers.

‘ The damage to the barriers suggest a car going at speed in one direction, into the cold and dark Avoca river at that hour of the night with a man she knew couldn’t swim,’ he said.

Concluding, he said the prosecution case was that she acted with deliberate intent when she drove off the pier and asked for a verdict of guilty of murder.

Earlier on Wednesday, before the prosecution closed its case, portions of a detective’s interview with Ms Herda, in which he put it to her that she had ‘ lured him out of his house’ that morning, were played to the court.

Detective Sergeant Fergus O’Brien entered the witness box last week to give evidence of interviews conducted with her following her arrest more than four months after the drowning. He was cross examined by the defence, with portions of the videos of the interviews played for the jury. The prosecution then re-examined him, playing further segments.

The portion where she was questioned about him getting into her car was played last Wednesday morning, July 20.

The gardaí told her that his front door had been found open later that morning and phone records showed that she had called him three times around 5.30 a.m.

‘ You rang him: ‘I’m outside, Csaba, come out’,’ suggested the detective. ‘Probably, yes,’ she replied. ‘ You lured him out of the house and he’s dead within 12 minutes,’ he said.

‘ This is horrible,’ she responded. ‘Everyone is looking at this story from the last few seconds.’

She said it had been going on for two years.

She said he had been screaming in the car and she’d wanted him to stop.

‘ You definitely achieved your objective,’ said the officer. ‘ You don’t like me,’ she said. He said he felt sorry for her. ‘I want to help that person. I don’t want to kill that person,’ she said.

‘ You got him out of bed at five in the morning and drove him into the river,’ he said.

‘ That’s the most stupid thing I ever heard, that I want to kill someone,’ she replied.

In his closing speech on Thursday morning, the lawyer for the woman accused of murdering her colleague by driving him into a harbour, where he drowned, said that if she had done so deliberately she would be ‘committing suicide’.

Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC also said that the deceased was probably the one who had pulled the handbrake, but that this wasn’t proof of guilt.

Mr O Lideadha said that the prosecution case was completely unsustainable and didn’t make any sense. He said there had been a tendency to run with a presumption of guilt.

He said that something amazing had happened in the State’s closing speech by Brendan Grehan SC.

‘He said to you that some of you might find it fanciful or farfetched that Marta Herda deliberately drove into that water because she had the window open and could swim,’ he said.

Mr O Lideadha said it was a true and important concession.

‘I’m happy to allow you to apply your gut here. It just doesn’t make sense,’ he said.

He noted that the prosecution then said that she might have wanted to commit suicide.

‘I find this a truly amazing proposition because that’s the defence case, that how could she have done this because it would be committing suicide,’ he said.

He said the evidence contradicted any proposition that she was suicidal.

He noted that the State had asked why Ms Herda had kept a Valentine’s card that Mr Orsos had sent if he was harassing her.

‘She doesn’t concede this but other people seem to see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘She actually gets something positive out of this as well, someone saying: “I love you. You’re the most amazing person.” Is that a criminal offence now?’

He suggested that this was also the reason she had rung him at 5 o’clock on the morning of the incident.

‘ The suggestion she rang him at 5 a.m. to kill him is totally bizarre,’ he said.

He explained that a murder conviction could be brought in only where there was intent to kill or seriously injure.

‘Below that level of intent, there’s recklessness: gross criminal negligence involving a high degree of recklessness,’ he said. ‘In this case, the driving into the river and the risk of death.’

He said that if the jurors decided that she may not have intended it, but was reckless about it and thought about the risk to life, a verdict of manslaughter would be open to them.

‘I would submit there’s no evidence to support that conclusion,’ he said, however.

He said dangerous driving