A man accused of the double murder of two friends, whose burned remains were found in an apartment in Dublin in March 2001, told a witness that he had lost £1,000 playing blackjack in an amusement arcade in the city.
Mr Yu (25), also known as "Jack", formerly of McKee Avenue, Finglas, Dublin, denies the murder of Ms Liu Qing (19) in an apartment at Blackhall Square, Dublin, between 6 p.m. on March 12th 2001 and 3 a.m. on March 14th 2001. Mr Yu also denies the murder of Mr Yue Feng (19) between 1 p.m. on March 12th and 3 a.m. on March 14th in the same place.
The DPP alleges that Mr Yu strangled his friends on March 12th and then returned to their apartment and set fire to it in the early hours of March 14th. As the prosecution case ended its first week, Ms Arunee Hennessy, owner of the Bangkok Café on Parnell Street, Dublin, in the year to March 2001, told the court that Mr Yu had worked for her on occasion. He once told her that he sometimes played blackjack on the machines in Dr Quirkey's Good Time Emporium on O'Connell Street, she told Mr Vincent Heneghan BL, prosecuting. He told her that he had lost £1,000 playing it.
The jury has heard that, on the evening of March 12th 2001, Mr Yu failed to turn up for work at 5 p.m. at Wollensky's, a restaurant in Temple Bar, where he was employed as a dishwasher.
The prosecution has called a former housemate of his, Ms Liu Sha Sha, who identified Mr Yu as the man depicted in a still from CCTV footage taken outside the Blackhall Square apartment.
In other evidence, senior fire officers told the court that they became suspicious when they saw the badly-charred bodies of the student couple lying on a bed at the scene of a fire and explosion at the apartment in Blackhall Square at about 1 a.m. on March 14th 2001.
Mr Eugene Duignan, Phibsboro station officer, said that he first noticed an elevated fire concentrated around the bed. The fire was small and was put out quickly. The bottom of the bed was severely burned and a partition wall beside it had shifted some eight inches from the skirting board. "I assumed it was some pressure blast - explosion in other words."
Mr Jim Murphy, district fire officer, said that on viewing the bodies he did not believe "it was a natural fire death". He noted that the bedroom window had been blown out. He believed that it was a small, localised fire, or flash-over. An accelerant such as petrol could have caused a flash-over.
The trial continues in the Central Criminal Court on Monday.