Murder accused points finger at his wife's lover

Thursday 31 January 2019

Transcripts of a conversation between a man accused of strangling his wife, and a family member, have revealed how he pointed the finger of blame at the man she’d been having an affair with for nearly 10 years in the aftermath of her death.

Alfredo Da Costa Rebelo (60) is currently standing trial in the Royal Court over the alleged murder of his wife, Ana (51), but denies the charge.

The prosecution’s case is that he killed her in a fit of rage upon learning about her lover.

Pictured: Yesterday was day three of the ongoing Royal Court trial.

However, transcripts and police interviews with him read in court yesterday showed him painting a different picture – namely, that he didn’t know about his wife’s decade-long affair until the police told him, and that his “conscience” told him her lover was responsible for beating and ultimately murdering her.

On what was day three of the ongoing trial, Crown Advocate Howard Sharp, who is leading the prosecution, read out transcripts of Mr Rebelo’s interviews with the police, with the help of Detective Sergeant James McGranahan.

In those, Mr Rebelo said he had found his wife dead in their daughter’s bed around 08:30 on 4 April. When he woke up, he apparently found Mrs Rebelo still asleep and asked her if she was going to work. As she didn’t reply, he went to shake her and realised she was dead. “I was in shock finding my wife dead,” he later told officers. 

After this, Mr Rebelo said that he went to empty the bin, before trying to find his sons or his sister-in-law as he doesn’t speak English and didn’t have a mobile phone at the time.

When he first spoke to his younger son, he told him Mrs Rebelo was in hospital because he didn’t want him to go straight home and be upset. He only told his sons what had happened when they arrived at the house.

Pictured: Mr Rebelo was interviewed on several occasions by the police.

Mr Rebelo said the night before her death, his wife had felt unwell and exhausted and that is why she had preferred to sleep in her daughter’s bed.

He denied they had argued. “In my home there’s none of that,” he told Court, adding: “We got on well.” He also denied the couple had ever been physical with each other.

When asked about his wife’s affair with another man, Mr Rebelo replied: “No comment, I believed in my wife.” In a later interview, he said: “I never knew anything about it.”

Mr Rebelo said he had neither noticed marks on his wife’s neck, nor that her face was swollen, when he found her body. When asked if he had seen something wrapped around her neck, he said: “I don’t know, I don’t know what it was... I can’t remember.” 

The police then asked him if he had seen knots in the leggings or if he had touched them, to which he replied: “I don’t know” and “I had a sudden reaction, I don’t know what happened.”

Officers asked him about an incident that had happened on 30 March 2017 when Mrs Rebelo was found distressed on the street by passers-by. Mr Rebelo said he didn’t know anything about it. 

Pictured: Mr Rebelo said he had no idea his wife had been having an affair for over 10 years.

Transcripts of a conversation between Mr Rebelo and a family member were also read in Court. They showed that a few days after his wife’s death, he said: “My conscience says it is [the lover] who did it, who beat her, because she was walking away from him.”

Later on, he said Mrs Rebelo was running away from her lover and avoiding him. He said she had changed pavements on several occasions to avoid talking to him.

“They won’t find out anything, they are all over me” Mr Rebelo said of the investigation into her death in another conversation. 

Defending Mr Rebelo, Advocate Julian Gollop called Dr Richard Shepherd, the consultant forensic pathologist who conducted the post-mortem examination, to give evidence.

He agreed with Dr Russell Delaney's conclusion that Mrs Rebelo had died as a result of “compression of the neck by ligature”, although he said only the veins and carotid artery had been blocked, not her airways. 

Pictured: Ana Rebelo was found dead at 10 Victoria Street on 4 April 2017.

Dr Shepherd said that “the more turns around the neck, the more knotting” the more stable and the most secure the ligature would have been. 

He said Mrs Rebelo has probably died in the middle of the night, around 03:00, and that there was no evidence of her struggling. 

“[There are] no features of her death that are not consistent with self-strangulation,” he concluded, adding that he didn’t believe a fit 50-year-old woman “would be so overpowered, so quickly that there wouldn’t be any sign of disturbance” in the room.

Both Advocate Gollop and the Crown Advocate will be addressing Jurats Jane Ronge and Jerry Ramsden today in their closing speeches. The Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache will then give legal directions before the Jurats retire to consider their verdict.