A number of senior police officers yesterday told jurors how a man first said that he was with two men when they killed his aunt, then changed his version and mentioned another two men and then subsequently told them that he was alone when he murdered his aunt.

The police officers were testifying in the first day of the trail by jury of Ivan Cauchi, 25, from Xewkija, who is standing trial charged with the murder of his aunt Elisabeth Cauchi, 59, on the night of 24 and 25 February 2004 in Triq Kraba in Xewkija.

The bill of indictment alleges that Mr Cauchi entered into his aunt’s house. As soon as he got inside, he got hold of his aunt’s arm and demanded her to tell him where she kept her money. The bill states that Ms Cauchi resisted her nephew and a scuffle ensued. Mr Cauchi grabbed a number of hard objects and hit her repeatedly on her head and other vital parts of her body.

The bill continues that when the elderly woman did not resist him any longer, he tried choking her and continued to brutally attack her so that she could not recognise him and tell the police it was him. Neighbours found Ms Cauchi dead in the first room of her residence the following morning.

Police Inspector Chris Pullicino, who was the chief investigator of this case, explained that at around 4.15pm on 25 February 2004, relatives found Ms Cauchi dead at her house. He said investigations began immediately and when he arrived on the scene of the crime, he noticed that relatives had broken a glass to get into the house after they suspected that something had happened to the elderly woman.

Mr Pullicino said the slain woman was facing down in the first room of her house and had a cushion underneath her head.

The police inspector said that until the Homicide Squad arrived on the scene of the crime, a number of curious people had got into the house to see what happened. He said investigators spoke to these people and asked about their whereabouts the previous night.

The accused denied ever getting into the house at first and said that at 11pm the previous night, he was sleeping at home, he said.

Inspector Pullicino said that according to police investigations, it resulted that on 24 February (the day before Ms Cauchi was killed) Ms Cauchi was helping her nephews at a grocery in the same area and later on went to her friend Mari-Gwann Xuereb.

They went for a walk and at around 10.45pm she went back home. The clothes she was found dead in were the same clothes she was wearing the previous day, the inspector said.

He explained that on 3 March, Anthony Said approached the police and said that his employee, Joseph Agius, had found a set of keys while he was cutting grass close to where Ms Cauchi used to live. When the police spoke to Mr Agius, he told them that he was cutting grass when he found the keys close to a wall in the same street.

Later in his testimony, Inspector Pullicino said police investigations revealed that Mr Cauchi had lied to the police because CCTV footage showed him playing an instrument in a bar in Xewkija when he had told police that he was asleep.

When confronted with this information, Mr Cauchi admitted that he had lied and told the police that a certain Michael Pace and a certain Lawrence Attard were with him on the night of the murder.

Mr Cauchi told Mr Pullicino that 15 days before, Mr Pace had approached him and talked him into robbing his aunt. Later on he told investigators that Mr Pace and Mr Attard had nothing to do with the murder case. Subsequently, he told the police he was going to tell them the whole story and this time involved another two people: Anthony Pace and John Bugeja, his cousin. He told police that they had used cable ties to restrain the victim while they robbed her.

Inspector Pullicino said that Ms Cauchi was not tied up when she was found and the tie clips had been removed by the person or people who killed her. This detail was important for investigators, he said, because it continued to convince them that Mr Cauchi was there.

On 8 March, while at the depot, he admitted with the police that he had lied to them again and that he alone had killed his “zija Lisa” and had released a statement in this regard.

Inspector Pullicino said the police could not trace Mr Cauchi until mid-August because every time they went to arrest him he was always at the mental hospital, using it, the witness said, as an excuse not to be investigated. When they eventually managed to arrest him, he explained that he had someone who used to inform him that the police had arrived from Malta and were looking for him.

In the first statement, he told police that Michael Pace and Lawrence Attard were wearing carnival masks when they were robbing his aunt but he did not wear any mask.

During yesterday’s sitting, jurors heard the recordings of two interrogations during the police investigations. During these interrogations, Mr Cauchi said he gave his girlfriend a lift home and then went outside his aunt’s house to wait for her to come back home.

He said that as soon as she opened the door, he pushed her into the house and demanded her money. He said he was angry at her because she had not given him any of the antique items she had promised him and neither a dog she had promised.

He said that after he hit his aunt repeatedly, she was losing blood from her nose and her ears. He said he untied the cable ties around her wrists before he left because he felt sorry for her. The cushion underneath his aunt’s head was used to suffocate her, he said.

Superintendent Antonello Grech said police investigations revealed that after his grandfather died, he lived with his aunt for some time but did not live there for the seven months prior to the murder.

Mr Cauchi told him that his aunt had just sold a piece of property in Xlendi for around Lm4,000.

Superintendent Grech said that after releasing the first statement, he gave Mr Cauchi a lift back to Gozo and that as soon as they arrived in Mgarr, they met Mr Cauchi’s father and Mr Cauchi immediately told him that he had killed his aunt. To this, his father replied that it was not the case and that the police questions had driven him crazy, Superintendent Grech said.

Police Inspector John Charles Ellul said that as he was walking through a corridor following interrogations, the accused told him that he had lied to the investigators and was alone when he killed his aunt.

The case continues today.

Senior Counsel to the Republic Anthony Barbara is prosecuting while Dr Joe Mifsud is appearing for the accused. Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono is presiding over the case.