NSW: Backpacker denies murdering prostitute s brother

AAP General News (Australia)
08-28-2000
NSW: Backpacker denies murdering prostitute s brother

SYDNEY, Aug 28 AAP - An Irish backpacker today denied murdering the brother of a prostitute
he visited by stabbing him to death.

Gerard Joseph Gallagher told the New South Wales Supreme Court that, to his knowledge,
he had never met Mateo Macarana Mamaril, who was killed in a Bondi unit, in Sydney's east,
on May 30 last year.

Asked by his barrister, Bob Greenwood, QC, if he killed Mr Mamaril, Gallagher replied:
"No, I did not."

Gallagher, 25, pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Mamaril, 30.

Mr Mamaril was staying in the unit which his sister, Mely Mamaril, used as a brothel
while she lived in a unit upstairs with her boyfriend.

Gallagher accepted the left side of a Fila brand running shoe found in the unit where
Mr Mamaril was stabbed to death was his, but could not explain how it got there.

He said he told police when interviewed about the killing in June last year his Fila
shoes had gone missing about four or five weeks earlier.

Gallagher said shoes were left outside the front of his sharehouse when they smelled.

"I just presumed they had been stolen from the front of the house," he said.

He said that, in hindsight, it was possible he had left his shoes at the unit when
he went there with a change of clothes because he was going out afterwards.

"I don't remember leaving them there though," he said.

Gallagher told the court that on the night of the murder he was out with his housemates
celebrating one of their birthdays.

He said they went to an inner city restaurant and then on to two bars before becoming separated.

"We were all fairly plastered," he said.

Gallagher said he went to another bar, had something to eat and then caught a cab home,
arriving about 5am.

Once there, he had to wake housemate Christopher Taaffe, who was asleep on the couch,
to ask for some change to pay the cab driver.

Mr Taaffe has told the court he could not remember being woken by Gallagher.

Gallagher said he then went to bed and did not get up again until about 10.30am or 11am.

He returned clothes he had borrowed and worn that evening to another housemate, Ciaran
Quinn, who has told the court there was no blood on them.

The trial is continuing before Justice Robert Hulme.

AAP gl/sb/rs/br a

KEYWORD: GALLAGHER (CARRIED EARLIER)

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