“I was afraid to speak out about what I knew, for fear I may meet the same fate as Therese, because the accused is spiteful,” Rodney Vella told the court yesterday.

Mr Vella, a childhood friend of Therese Agius, whose body was found floating off Delimara on 12 October, 1999, was testifying in the trial by jury of Joseph Azzopardi, who stands charged with her murder and with heroin trafficking.

Mr Vella and the victim used to date in their early teens, but they had gone their separate ways when he changed school. They met again at Detox, as they both had a drug habit.

He said he was afraid they might harm him or his family, not because they threatened him, but because he regarded the accused as a spiteful person, who would go to any lengths.

Mr Vella clarified in court that he had said this because he had once seen the accused come to blows with someone.

The Monday after Therese Agius went missing, Mr Vella testified that he was at the detox with a man called Patrick, his girlfriend and the accused, when the latter told them he had been taking heroin with Therese, when she overdosed.

He said the accused told them he started to slap her face and had even tried splashing water on her face. Although he was not sure whether this was the truth, he said the accused remained perfectly serious.

He also told the police that Mr Azzopardi seemed genuinely upset about what happened, and “even told me that he would not have done such a thing to her.” Replying to questions by defence lawyer Malcolm Mifsud, he said the accused had sworn to him he had nothing to do with her death.

“Therese was in the Caritas programme and seemed determined to kick her habit,” he said, adding that she had said the accused was harassing her at the time.

Regarding photos of the accused preparing heroin, he said he had cautioned him about the police finding them, but Mr Azzopardi had simply said he would claim it was a joke.

“Charles Debono, also known as ‘Maradona’, once approached me and told me my daughter owed him Lm150, but I said I would pay him, as long as he left her alone,” an emotional Carmelo Agius, father of the victim, testified.

Therese’s father explained that his daughter had on more than one occasion told him she desperately wanted to kick the habit, and she also told him the accused would not leave her in peace.

He explained that he would use any means to get through to her, including her sister. “I missed a lot of work to go and pick her up, as I was afraid of what he might do,” he said.

Mr Agius explained that although friends of the accused tried to convince him he was a good guy, he felt it was not right. He had heard he was involved in drugs and the like.

In the days following her disappearance he used to go and look for her in Gżira, he explained, and the accused would invent places where his daughter might be.

“On the day my daughter was found, we were searching for her with the police, but they left. Later relatives called to tell us a body was found, but they didn’t know if it was her,” he said, his voice choking.

Mary Agius, the victim’s mother, said her daughter used to tell her she did not want to be with Mr Azzopardi, and said she once approached him to leave her daughter alone. “He was not a good man; I didn’t want her with him.”

When her daughter opened up about her drug habit, they immediately phoned Caritas and she started the programme, she explained, tears spilling over.

“The last time I saw my daughter alive was a Friday, when I took her to Floriana. She used to spend her days at the programme, and would not go out in the evenings,” she said.

She recalled how that evening her daughter called ‘I’m going out ma’ and told her she would be home by 11pm.

On Monday morning Debono knocked on her door and asked if Therese was there, as she had his key. She told him her daughter had been out of the house for two days.

At that point he said he thought she had locked herself in the bathroom, jumped off the pavement and ran off, she said.

“I realised something bad had happened to my daughter,” she said, and with a haunted look in her eyes left the witness stand.