Allen Tehrankari presented “disjointed,” “fractured,” and “convoluted” theories throughout his murder trial in the death of Barbara Galway, the Crown said in closing statements yesterday.
“I expect you’re fully confused by the theories by Mr. Tehrankari,” assistant Crown attorney Michael Boyce told the jury and a packed courtroom yesterday.
Tehrankari’s accusations that police were trying to frame him were “preposterous,” said Boyce, adding that Tehrankari had also said that witnesses called during the trial were in on the conspiracy.
On Jan. 6, 2005, Galway’s burned remains were found near a hiking trail in Mer Bleu. Tehrankari, who is charged in her murder, is representing himself — a rare move in such a trial as this — in court after a mistrial two years earlier.
The Crown alleges that Tehrankari sexually assaulted and killed his sister-in-law in his South Keys home and that he dumped her body and set it on fire.
Tehrankari argued in court that on the day Galway disappeared, two intruders sexually assaulted him in his own home at gunpoint and extracted his semen. He said the DNA had been planted in her body to frame him.
The accused said he was unable to say whether the intruders were men or women because they had “whispered” to him, ordering him not to look at them.
Several things Tehrankari said just “defied logic,” the Crown attorney said.
Shortly after Tehrankari testified that the intruders had left his home and his wife returned, the accused “leaves his wife and child alone and goes outside to run errands, including doing some ice chipping because his in-laws were coming that week, and he leaves for work two hours and 15 minutes early,” Boyce said.
The Crown told the jury that Tehrankari was “showing interest in Galway. He was enamoured with her.
“But Ms. Galway didn’t want her sister’s marriage to be jeopardized because of her brother-in-law’s straying,” Boyce said.
On Jan. 5, 2005 — the day of her death — Galway had planned to approach the accused and her sister about his inappropriate behaviour.
“But he wouldn’t have that,” Boyce told the court.
