Nearly 40 years after teenager Karin Grech was murdered with a letter bomb, crucial evidence has gone missing, a judicial protest filed today said.

The girl’s father, former Labour MP Edwin Grech, his wife Pearl and son Kevin have officially held the Attorney General, Commissioner of Police and the Director General of Courts responsible for the disappearance of a crucial piece of evidence.

Sources from the court have later told this newsroom that preliminary investigations showed that no files were missing. 

Karin was killed by a letter bomb in December 1977, and the inquiry into her death is still officially open.

The Grech family argued the defendants were responsible for the lack of progress of the investigation. The family has been made aware that pieces of the envelope which had contained the explosive have gone missing from the courts.

This evidence could have shed light on the crime, thanks to new techniques of forensic science developed in the 40 years since the murder.

At the time of the killing, Grech was working as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in the United Kingdom. He had returned to Malta during strike action carried out by doctors to provide services at St Luke’s Hospital.

Less than three months after his return, on 28 December, 1977, a large brown envelope containing a packet in Christmas wrapping paper was received at the doctor’s residence in San Gwann.

His 15 year-old daughter Karin opened the package, which was a letter-bomb, and was severely wounded in the ensuing blast, dying later that same day. Her brother, Kevin, was also grievously injured and had to be treated abroad.

“While a magisterial inquiry into the murder is still ongoing, despite the indications, assistance and cooperation of the Grechs, there has been no positive outcome and those who perpetrated this barbaric and shocking act have to this day not been brought before a court,” reads the protest.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Amadeus Cachia and Yanika Vidal signed the judicial protest.