Irma Palasics (centre) with her daughters, Elizabeth (right) and Irma Jr. Photo: Supplied by family.
In the early hours of a morning 25 years ago, a woman arrived at hospital and her visibly injured father told her that her mother had just been killed.
Steve Fabriczy and Joseph Vekony, both 70, are facing an ACT Supreme Court jury trial accused of murdering 72-year-old Irma Palasics on the night of 6 November 1999.
That night, two intruders broke into the Palasics’ home, stole $30,000 cash and jewellery and tied up and assaulted the couple, resulting in Irma’s death.
In a recording played to jurors on Monday (23 February), her daughter Elizabeth Mikita told police she was woken up at 4:30 am that morning. She went to hospital to meet her father, Gregor Palasics, who told her, while crying, “They killed Mum, they killed Mum”.
She had difficulty understanding him due to the injuries to his face.
“He said he heard Mum screaming for quite a while,” she said.
“He said Mum was screaming and then she stopped.”
Jurors also heard from police officers who arrived at the home on Grover Crescent in McKellar within minutes of Gregor calling Triple Zero that night.
One constable, in a statement read to the court, said he had gone into the house and saw it had been ransacked while a woman was lying on her back in the hallway, still in her nightdress.
“I saw the female had blood around her face, her hands,” he said.
She also had duct tape around her wrists, and there appeared to be blood stains on the carpet around her.
Detective Sergeant Paul Hutchinson, then a constable just six months out from the academy, said he arrived to see the kitchen had been “torn apart” while the television was “really, really loud”.
“When I first went in, I couldn’t hear too much because it was so loud,” he said.
He saw Gregor had a lot of injuries and blood around his face.
“He had blood all over his clothes,” Detective Sergeant Hutchinson said
“He was very distressed. He talked about how his wife had died.”
Gregor pointed him towards the body of his wife, and the detective sergeant grew emotional in the courtroom when describing the scene.
Elizabeth also told police about the first time her parents had been burgled, in June 1997, when they lived at Red Hill.
She said her mother called and said, in Hungarian, “We’ve been robbed. They got $100,000 under the house. It’s all gone”.
She arrived at her parents’ home and saw “everything was pulled apart” in the garage and under their house; bags, boxes, the fridge and freezer had been emptied.
“To me, they seemed to be extremely thorough,” she said.
“They looked through the manure, they had chook manure in there.”
Irma and Gregor Palasics, pictured in the 1970s. Photo: Supplied by family.
Elizabeth said her mother hadn’t told anybody how much cash was in the house at the time – even her father didn’t know she had hidden so much money.
She said when they renovated the kitchen at her parents’ home in McKellar, they built a “hidey-hole” in a drawer under the wall oven.
“Mum’s always been a bit concerned about where to put her money and her jewellery because of the other robberies,” she said.
Daughter Irma Jambor, who was also interviewed after her mother’s death, said her parents would play poker machines about once a week.
She said their friends knew about their gambling, as they would sit with them at the Hungarian Club and mention their money.
“They wouldn’t say exactly how much, just that they’d got money,” she said.
Jurors have already heard Mr Fabriczy and Mr Vekony are both Hungarian.
Scott Rowell, then a search and rescue team member, said he was part of a line search in McKellar on 13 November 1999 when they found a 35 cm-long iron bar outside a home on Dumas Street.
Defence barrister Travis Jackson suggested this location was up to 900 metres away from the Palasics’ house, and Mr Rowell accepted it was a significant distance between the two homes.
Mr Fabriczy has pleaded guilty to one count of burglary as he admitted going to the Palasics’ home on 6 November, 1999, but he pleaded not guilty to murder. Mr Vekony pleaded not guilty to charges that included murder and two counts of burglary.
The allegations against the two accused were outlined when the trial began earlier this week, before jurors heard more about the 1998 burglary and the hidden compartment.
The trial continues before Justice David Mossop.
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