A woman accused of murdering a pensioner whose skull was fractured and his body allegedly thrown over Ireland’s tallest cliffs told gardai she was “a bit manic” and was exaggerating when she told a friend she had hit the deceased over the head.
The trial also heard that Nikita Burns (23) told gardai that her co-accused, Alan Vial (39), had struck the deceased man Robert ‘Robin’ Wilkin (66) six or seven times with a rock.
She described seeing Mr Vial with the rock in his hand, “smashing it off Robin’s head” while she told him to stop.
She said: “I saw blood going everywhere and Alan just kept hitting him and hitting him and I kept saying, that’s enough.” When Mr Vial stopped, she said, Mr Wilkin was dead and lay slumped between the car seats while Mr Vial drove to the cliffs at Sliabh Liag.
Ms Burns said Mr Vial had suggested they throw Mr Wilkin over the cliff. They drove for 30 minutes and when they got to the top, she said Mr Vial “dragged him [the deceased] over to the fence and pushed him over.”
Ms Burns said she did not get out of the car at Sliabh Liag and did not touch the rock or hit Mr Wilkin at any point.
Ms Burns of Carrick, Co Donegal and Mr Vial of Drumanoo Head, Killybegs, Co Donegal have pleaded not guilty to the murder of 66-year-old Robert ‘Robin’ Wilkin on June 25, 2023 in Donegal. Mr Wilkin’s body was found eight days later in the water below the Sliabh Liag cliffs.
Det Gda Patrick Farrell told prosecution counsel Emmet Nolan BL that Ms Burns was arrested on June 26, the day after the alleged murder, and interviewed three times at Ballyshannon Garda Station.
In her first interview she said that she and Mr Vial had been “seeing each other” for a few weeks and when asked if they were in love, she replied: “Yeah.”
She had been living at Mr Vial’s five-bedroom house along with Mr Wilkin for about one month. She said she and Mr Vial worked for Mr Wilkin, who was involved in a concrete business.
In her first two interviews, she said she didn’t know what happened to Mr Wilkin but in her third interview, she told the detectives that Mr Vial killed Mr Wilkin and threw him off a cliff.
She said she had difficulty remembering what happened because she was “really drunk” but she thought she had been in the front passenger seat of a Volkswagen Passat which was being driven by Mr Wilkin. The two men were fighting, she said, and Mr Wilkin pulled over in an area that she later identified as Roshine in Fintown after gardai showed her CCTV footage of the Passat’s movements.
She said she remembered seeing Mr Vial with a rock in his hands. “He kept smashing off Robin’s head with it and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop,” she said.
Mr Vial struck the deceased six or seven times with the rock, she said, and when he stopped Mr Wilkin was dead.
She said it was Mr Vial’s idea to put the body over the cliff at Sliabh Liag.
Sharon O’Dowd has previously given evidence that she spoke to Ms Burns by phone the night after Mr Wilkin’s death. Ms O’Dowd said Ms Burns told her that she and Mr Vial “beat some man’s head in” so she recorded part of the conversation. Gardai played the recording to Ms Burns.
Following a five-minute consultation with her solicitor, Ms Burns said: “I was off my head, I was a bit manic and then I over-exaggerated the story because I felt I needed to tell somebody and then I just over-exaggerated. I wanted to protect Alan. I wanted him not to take the fall.”
When asked what specifically she had exaggerated, she said: “I exaggerated that I hit him over the head and dragged his body.”
She denied murdering Mr Wilkin or throwing him over the cliff and said she did not touch the rock or hit the deceased.
She said she returned to Sliabh Liag the following day because Mr Vial wanted to “have a look to make sure the body was not still there”. She said they didn’t see anything so they left.
She further told gardai that the only reason she cleaned blood from the Passat was that she felt “threatened” after Mr Vial told her he didn’t know what he would do if she didn’t help.
It is the prosecution case that the two accused caused Mr Wilkin’s death having engaged in a joint enterprise with the intention to cause serious injury to him.
The jury has been told that where two or more people set out on a criminal enterprise, each one is responsible in law for the actions of the other. The statement of one accused person cannot be used as evidence against the other, the jurors were also told.
The trial will continue next Tuesday before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of seven women and five men.
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