Chef denies murder of man whose dismembered body was found in grounds of derelict house in Cork

A 30-year-old chef has denied the murder of a father of three whose dismembered body was found hidden under bushes in the grounds of a derelict house in Cork City over three years ago.

Ionut Cosmin Nicolescu denied the charge of murdering Francis ‘Frankie’ Dunne (64) on a date unknown between December 27th and December 28th, 2019, at Castlegreine House, Boreenamanna Road, Cork, when he was arraigned at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.

Opening the prosecution case on Monday, Ray Boland SC warned the jury that there were “unfortunately some gruesome aspects to this case that you will have to listen to” before proceeding to give them a broad outline of the evidence the state expects to call in the case over the next three weeks.

He told the jury that Mr Dunne was an alcoholic who lived at Clanmornin House, a high support housing unit run by Cork Simon on the Boreenamanna Road, and he sometimes used to go drinking in the grounds of nearby Castle Greine House, which was unoccupied.

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He said the State would produce evidence that the accused, Mr Nicolescu, a Romanian, who had been living in Ireland since 2016 and was working at the Silver Key pub in Ballinlough, left Aldi in Cork City centre at 7.54pm and returned to Castlegreine House where he had been squatting.

He said the State would also produce evidence on that on the night of December 28th, 2019, a local man, Joe Pearse gained entry to the garden of Castle Greine House while looking for his cat, only to find a dismembered body under a tree.

The body of the man was naked save for its socks and was missing both its head and arms, but the arms were found hidden under bushes near where the body had been found while the head and clothing were later found by gardaí stuffed into some black refuse sacks.

The scene was preserved and the body, which was identified as that of Mr Dunne, was removed for a postmortem examination at Cork University Hospital by State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers. This confirmed he had died from compression of the neck and blunt force trauma to the head.

Mr Boland said the postmortem by Dr Okkers also found that Mr Dunne’s head and arms were cut off after he had died. It also found fragments of glass in his head and in his clothing, consistent with him being hit on the head with a glass bottle.

He said that a garda investigation led them to focus on Mr Nicolescu, who stayed at Castle Greine House that night and went to work as normal on Saturday, December 28th at the Silver Key. Later that night, he returned to discover gardaí at Castle Greine House and the scene cordoned off.

He said that State would allege that Mr Nicolescu stayed elsewhere that night and, after finishing work in the Silver Key the next day, Sunday, December 29th, he took a bus from Cork to Dundalk and on to Belfast from where he flew to Edinburgh before flying home to Romania.

He said that a group of gardaí travelled to Romania on January 16th, 2020, and were present when Mr Nicolescu presented voluntarily at a Romanian police station in the company of his lawyer and was questioned by Romanian police about Mr Dunne’s death and dismemberment.

He said that Mr Nicolescu told Romanian police that he returned to Castle Greine House on December 27th to find Frankie Dunne unconscious on the ground at the front corner of the house and two men, one armed with a machete and one with a knife, standing over him.

Mr Boland said that the jury would hear that Mr Nicolescu told Romanian police that the men threatened him and forced him to help them dispose of Mr Dunne’s body, which was taken into the back garden where one of the men cut off Mr Dunne’s head and arms with a knife.

Mr Boland said it was the State’s case that these men “were phantoms” that it was Mr Nicolescu who killed and dismembered Mr Dunne’s body.

The case against Mr Nicolescu from Branistea Village, Branistea Commune, Damovita County, Romania continues on Tuesday before a jury of four men and eight women and Mr Justice Paul McDermott and is expected to last three weeks at the Anglesea Street Courthouse in Cork.