The murder of teenager Marioara Rostas was a precise execution and not a crime of passion or temper, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Seán Gillane SC was giving the closing speech for the State in the trial of the 35-year-old Dublin man charged with her murder.
Alan Wilson of New Street Gardens has pleaded not guilty to 18-year-old's murder at a house on Brabazon Street, The Coombe, Dublin between January 7 and January 8, 2008.
Mr Gillane reminded the jury that the Romanian teenager had been begging with her brother at a junction in Dublin City around 2pm on January 6th 2008. A car stopped, there was a conversation with the driver, she got in, her brother was given €10 and the car drove off.
"Marioara is never seen again by anyone that cared for her," he said.
He noted that she had phoned her brother in Romania the following day, 'distressed, frightened and asking for her Daddy to come get her' before the phone was cut off.
He said that by September 2008, the car had been identified as being owned by the accused. The house on Brabazon Street that Alan Wilson's sister shared with her partner, Fergus O'Hanlon, had been identified as an address of significance.
The house had been the subject of arson in February 2008 but the significance of the fire hadn't been appreciated then. When it was forensically examined, bullets were recovered from a wall.
"The calibre of bullet used was entirely consistent with the fragments recovered from the head of Marioara Rostas," he said.
Alan Wilson was arrested in October 2008 on suspicion of murder and Fergus O'Hanlon on suspicion of withholding information.
"An informal parade was held with Fergus O'Hanlon. No-one was picked out," he said.
He asked the jury to jump forward to January 2012 when O'Hanlon helped gardai locate the victim's body, where he said he had helped Mr Wilson bury it.
O'Hanlon has since told the trial that on January 8th 2008 he arrived home to find a girl dead in his house and Mr Wilson with a gun in his hand.
Mr Gillane said that the question was whether it was possible to marry the evidence in terms of the DPP's case against Alan Wilson.
"That's done through the evidence of Fergus O'Hanlon," he said of the convicted criminal, who has been granted immunity from prosecution.
"I make no bones about that. He is the case," he said.
He said that the jury's job was to tie the facts of the case.
"That involves a journey through the heart of darkness," he said. "He (O'Hanlon) was involved in the burial of a young girl, who was savagely killed."
He noted that the witness had also kept quiet about the crime for four years.
"That speaks to an almost unimaginable withering of his own humanity," he said. "But, the prosecution says that a core humanity won out at the end of the day."
"The evidence on which the prosecution relies was never going to be from an altar boy or choir boy," he added.
He said that O'Hanlon had already gotten away with his crime of assisting a killer when he decided to help gardai in late 2011. His solicitor warned him that he didn't have to co-operate and that he could be charged if he did so.
"But, standing on the side of that mountain in January 2012, with the words of his solicitor ringing in his ear, he helped the guards find Marioara Rostas," he said.
He said that much had been made of O'Hanlon's crimes and temper, with his life being referred to as a train wreck in court.
"How was Marioara Rostas killed?" he asked. "She was executed in a manner that was cold, calculated and precise."
"Her remains were stripped..., covered up with exactitude with items purchased for that very effect," he continued. "She was buried in a place not randomly selected for its isolation, where existed a well-made, pre-prepared grave."
"Thereafter, Ms Rostas's personal effects and almost every last scrap of evidence ... was meticulously destroyed," he said. "This was no crime of passion, of temper or loss of control. It was the exact opposite."
He asked the jury to conclude that Alan Wilson was guilty of murder.
However, Michael O'Higgins SC, defending, said that he wasn't asking for an altar boy or choir boy in what he described as 'a one-witness case'.
"I will take the commonest street thug if he gets into that witness box and tells the truth," he said.
He said that the first and last things out of O'Hanlon's mouth during his days in court were lies.
"All you heard from him were lies and contrived lies," he said.
He asked the jury to consider the photofit prepared from the victim's brother's description of the man who drove his sister away.
"It's a very strong likeness to him," he said of O'Hanlon.
He also reminded the jury that O'Hanlon had refused to take part in a formal identification parade.
He noted that Ms Rostas had called out letters from a street sign she could see during her phone call to her brother on January 7th. He said these letters could be found in the sign directly across the street from O'Hanlon's home.
"That means she was in Brabazon Street .. prior to the 8th when she was murdered," he said. "It's Fergus O'Hanlon who lived in Brabazon Street. It's a connection to him, like the photofit."
Mr O'Higgins will conclude his closing speech on Tuesday morning. Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy will then charge the jury of 10 men and two women.
