Dubai: The fact that an expat journalist’s dark-blue suit had not been stained by his wife’s blood is what made police suspect that he had killed her, a court heard on Sunday.
The journalist, Francis Mathew, 61, denied the charge of intentionally killing his wife by hitting her twice on the forehead with a hammer when he appeared earlier before the Dubai Court of First Instance.
“When I examined the reported murder scene, the suspect initially claimed to me that after he spotted his wife on the bed, he tried to lift her blood-covered body to check if she was still alive. Based on his claims, his dark-blue suit should have had some blood stains. However, when I examined it using the ultraviolet light, the analysis confirmed that the suit had not been stained by the victim’s blood. That was when the 61-year-old became surrounded by suspicions that he had killed her,” a high-ranking Dubai Police officer testified before presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi on Sunday.
Mathew, a former Gulf News staff member, struck his wife on the forehead with a hammer twice and killed her following a heated argument over financial issues, prosecutors said.
The incident allegedly happened around 7 am on July 4 at the British couple’s villa in Umm Suqeim.
In his statement before the court, the senior police officer said: “The suspect told me first that he went to work at 8 am and, when he returned around 5pm and called his wife, she didn’t respond. Then he found her on the bed and once he realised that she had a severe forehead injury and was soaked by her own blood, he went directly to the bed and tried to straighten her body up to check if she was still alive.
“Several experts were summoned to examine the crime scene … a forensic expert, fingerprints expert, biological expert and the K9s. The dead woman’s fingers of one hand were clutched together and couldn’t be opened. I went back to him [Mathew] to review what he had told me earlier … and he repeated what he had said. There were no bloodstains on his suit that would corroborate his initial claims that he lifted up her body off the bed. The ultraviolet light analysis confirmed that his suit wasn’t stained and that’s when and how we started suspecting him.”
The officer further notified presiding judge Al Shamsi that the forensic examiner, who prepared the forensic report, had resigned from Dubai Police.
The examiner, who had been summoned to Sunday’s hearing to give his statement as a prosecution witness, didn’t show up in court.
The court reconvenes on January 7.
