A Polish national has gone on trial accused of battering and strangling 25-year-old County Antrim woman Shirley Finlay to death.
We’re sorry. This video is unavailable from your location.
Her naked body, wrapped in a duvet cover bound in black bin bags, was discovered in the Hill Street carpark of Ballymena Baptist Church on September 19, 2006.
Antrim Crown Court heard she had been strangled and also had bruising to her neck, scalp, face and left eye suggesting blows or punches or forceful pressure.
Former 51-year-old meat plant worker Henryk Gorski, who had been living in flat in Hill Street, denies murdering Ms Finlay, described as being a little eccentric, but nonetheless, "a quiet, harmless loner who seemed to prefer her own company".
A prosecution lawyer told the jury of seven women and five men that while Gorski suggested to police his "erstwhile lover" Gabriella Cabernak had framed him, he could not explain how his fingerprints got on the bin bags nor any of other "hard facts" linking him to Ms Finlay's dead body.
The trial is expected to take up to nine weeks to complete, as all of the evidence, and each step in the case, has to be translated into Polish, in real time, for Gorski who does not understand English.
As Mr Weir detailed the prosecution case Gorskie sat looking around him as a intreputer sat in the dock beside him translating the alleged evidence against him.
In that opening Mr Weir revealed that while the case against Gorski relied on "circumstantial evidence", that "evidence points ....inexorably to the accused".
"He has denied killing her or having anything to do with her, yet many hard facts link her dead body, or more particularly, the things used to conceal her dead and naked body, to his flat," declared Mr Weir.
Trial judge Mr Justice Hart also heard that beside Gorski's prints on the bin bags, the duvet cover can be linked to his flat as can a towel found inside the bundle.
A strand of hair matching that of Ms Finlay's was also recovered from a carpet in the flat, and a grey jacket found beside her body bore traces of DNA from Gorski's former lover who had moved from the flat sometime previously.
All of these matters, said Mr Weir, "are unexplained". None of these matters are explained" and that once the jury had heard all of the evidence they "will be satisfied that the accused is guilty as charged".
© Press Association