A woman on trial accused of murdering a Co Tyrone pensioner told a friend that she had “battered” a man with a rock and that she liked it, the Central Criminal Court in Dublin heard on Tuesday.
The trial also heard a recording of a separate phone call in which accused Nikita Burns, said that after a fight with the deceased Robert ‘Robin’ Wilkin, she and her co-accused Alan Vial drove until 3am and “pushed him [Mr Wilkin] off Sliabh Liag”.
Ms Burns (23) of Carrick and Alan Vial (39) of Drumanoo Head, Killybegs, both Co Donegal, have pleaded not guilty to the murder of 66-year-old Robert ‘Robin’ Wilkin on June 25, 2023.
Mr Wilkin’s body was found a week later in the water below the Sliabh Liag cliffs in Donegal.
Ms Burns has pleaded guilty to impeding the apprehension or prosecution of another person for an arrestable offence but the prosecution did not accept her plea.
Witness Chris Quinn on Tuesday told prosecution counsel Bernard Condon SC that Ms Burns had been homeless before he allowed her to move into his apartment in 2023.
About two weeks before the alleged murder, Ms Burns had moved out to live somewhere in Killybegs. She seemed to be doing well and told Mr Quinn by text that she “felt like a new woman”.
However, the witness said that when Ms Burns called around midnight on the night after the alleged murder, she seemed “panicky and deranged” .
She initially spoke to the other people in the house before coming to Mr Quinn’s room where she told him repeatedly that she was a “murderer”.
The trial also heard a recording of a separate phone call in which accused Nikita Burns, said that after a fight with the deceasNed Robert ‘Robin’ Wilkin, she aikitand her co-accused Alan Vial drove until 3am and “pushed him [Mr Wilkin] off Sliabh Liag”.
They started fighting, he said, before the car pulled up and either she or Mr Vial got a rock from somewhere along the road.
She said she she hit the man with the rock in his face. Mr Quinn recalled her saying that she “battered him in the face with the rock and she liked it”.
He added that she “didn’t seem to care that much” and after telling her story, asked for some of Mr Quinn’s antidepressant or antipsychotic medication before eating a chicken curry.
Under cross-examination, Mr Quinn confirmed to Alan Vial’s defence counsel Shane Costelloe SC that Ms Burns said she “battered the fella...and she said she liked it.”
Sharon O’Dowd told Mr Condon that she spoke on the phone that night with one of the men who was in Ms Burns’s company in Mr Quinn’s apartment.
Ms Burns took the phone and told Ms O’Dowd that she “beat some man’s head in, her and Alan”.
The witness decided she needed a recording of what Ms Burns was saying so she called her son to record the conversation on his mobile phone.
The recording was played to the court in which Ms Burns said that Mr Wilkin had been “fighting with us” and that he was “touching up my legs and doing whatever to me and that’s why Alan got pissed and dragged him out the back and started caving his head in.”
Ms Burns said this happened “a wee bit outside Killybegs” and afterwards she and Mr Vial drove until 3am “and we pushed him off Sliabh Liag.”
As the phone conversation continued, Ms Burns said Mr Vial had been arrested later that evening for drink driving after crashing the car.
Ms O’Dowd told Ms Burns’s defence counsel Eoin Lawlor SC that she recorded the conversation because Ms Burns is a vulnerable person and she thought she “was in a situation”.
The trial continues.