A MAN accused of murdering his wife in Dublin in August 2007 told gardaí he did not intend to kill her but “wanted to cause her suffering and pain”, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday
The court has also heard that Jean Gilbert (46) died of four stab wounds to the back.
David Bourke (49) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Ms Gilbert at their home at Laverna Dale, Castleknock, on August 28th, 2007.
Garda Karl Keane told Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, he interviewed Mr Bourke on the day of his wife’s death.
Mr Bourke said he slept the night before his wife’s death in his bedroom and his wife slept in the “box room”. His wife had moved to the box room in June “because she announced she wanted to separate on the 15th of June, and said she didn’t love me any more”.
Mr Bourke said he heard his wife leave the house at 5.20 the morning of the alleged murder.
Mr Bourke told gardaí he did not know exactly where his wife was going. “But I knew she was going to meet her boyfriend. He had come the previous day.”
Mr Bourke told Garda Keane he got a text from his wife that morning to say that she would be home at 10am. “I knew she’d been with her boyfriend but she told me she’d gone to get a message.”
His wife returned and went into the sittingroom. “I was feeling very angry. I took a long steak knife and put it in at the back of my shirt.”
He said his daughter asked for some toast and he put some bread in the toaster.
“I went into the sittingroom where my wife and two sons were watching TV.” He said he remembered “calling her a tramp”.
“I asked her about a phone my son was missing and had she given it to her boyfriend who’d come over from England. Then all I remember is taking the knife from behind my back.”
Mr Bourke told gardaí he “lunged” at his wife as she was sitting on an armchair. They both struggled on the floor and he stabbed her two or three times. He was “calling her names” when he stabbed her.
“My daughter came in, saying, ‘Why did you kill her? What is going to happen to us now’?”
Mr Bourke said he then put the knife on the mantelpiece and called 999. He went to the kitchen, got some tissue and brought it to his wife. “I gave her mouth-to-mouth several times.”
Mr Bourke told gardaí he “felt bad and remorseful for what [he] had just done”.
When asked what his intention was when he stabbed his wife, Mr Bourke said: “To cause her pain, it wasn’t to kill her.”
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy told the court that Ms Gilbert died due to four stab wounds to the back. There were also defence injuries to Ms Gilbert’s hands, “some caused by grasping the blade, confirming she struggled with her attacker”.
The trial continues.