Auckland's High Court Hungarian tourist Ferdinand Ambach took the stand in the Auckland High Court today, giving his account of what happened the December 2007 night he is accused of murdering Onehunga man Ronald Brown in what his own lawyer described as a "monstrous rage." Ambach trial Day 7 The jury first heard evidence this morning via video link from Hungary. Under questioning from prosecution and defense lawyers people who had known the accused in his homeland gave glowing character references. He was described as a nice guy, a drinker who was happy when drunk, and not quick to become angry. He was said to be a popular person who was entertaining in the company of others and was liked by many people, and to have been at one stage in a rock band. A close friend said Ambach was "a nice guy who was quiet and kept to himself." The friend had never known him to take drugs. He was said to hate drugs, although he later admitted in court he had tried marijuana once. A video witness said it was his study of marine biology which led Ambach to come to New Zealand where he hoped to scuba dive. The witnesses said Ambach had no 'homosexual tendencies.' He had apparently had a girlfriend in Egypt while travelling, but that relationship had ended and he was down about it, a friend said. The crown asked two witnesses, including Ambach's best friend, if anyone had ever seen the accused propositioned by a man, both said no. In Ambach's defence In his opening address, defence lawyer Peter Kaye told the jury that Ambach "is not homosexual, he has no homosexual tendencies whatsoever." He said Ambach was not violent or agresssive by nature and that the events of December 7 2007 were too much to have been merely the result of temper or drunken rage. "Something else was involved," Mr Kaye said, offering up the only "viable alternative", namely that Ambach was drugged. Nothing else, he said, explains the "monstrous rage" evident in Brown's home. The defence clarified that Ambach is 30 years old, was brought up in a small town and had an unremarkable upbringing. He has had no previous convictions of any kind and has never previously been before a court. He had initially studied farming and bee-keeping at a technical institute, but at university he was aiming for a degree in marine biology. The jury was told that in Hungary students must be proficient in a second language to receive a degree, and this was another reason he had come to New Zealand. On the witness stand This morning Ambach began to piece together his picture of events the night Brown was attacked and never regained consciousness before dying two days later. The accused man, who is speaking through an interpreter throughout the trial, constantly reiterated that he does not remember much of what allegedly happened. Before Ambach took the stand the jury was advised by the defence lawyer: "Don't look through the eyes of a cynic just because he is the accused... he is a human being." Asked by his lawyer if he had any homosexual leanings, Ambach replied: "Never." A girlfriend? "Yes." He and his girlfriend had shared an apartment in Hungary. Asked about evidence given last week by his New Zealand employer - that in response to a comment about gays he had resonded "I'll kill you!" - Ambach emphatically denied such a thing had happened. On the day of the attack, Ambach recalled, he drank three or four beers earlier and four more at Onehunga's 306 Bar where he met Brown. "I was standing by a table and he came to me," he said, adding that the pair fell into conversation about diving, music and travel in Europe. Brown bought him a drink. He said that when he went home with Brown he was "happy I could speak english with someone and because it was a Friday." Did he have any idea Brown was homosexual? "No." Asked about his strange behaviour recorded on security cameras in a liquor store en route to brown's home, in which he was seen trying to hide, waving his arms and making a motion like cutting his throat, Ambach said that small shops in Hungary do not have such cameras and that their presence was a novelty for him. Invited home Died: Ronald Brown The pair had arrived at Brown's home after dark and settled into armchair with the TV on. They each drank a beer, after which Brown went into the kitchen and mixed Ambach a bourbon and Coke, "which tasted strong." Ambach noticed a banjo on a bookshelf and tried strumming it but it was old and out of tune so he couldn't play it. While he was in an armchair, Ambach says, Brown approached, dropped to his knees and started touching Ambach's groin and caressing his thigh. Ambach says he stood up and said he was not gay. He says it was a brief incident which left Brown embarrased and apologetic. Soon Brown was back in the kitchen mixing another drink, which Ambach says he did not request. Asked why he didn't leave right then, he said he tried to be polite by waiting for the second drink before leaving. The second drink tasted the same as the first, he told the court. Ambach said that moments later, when he was standing, Brown came very close and "suddenly touched me again... all over my body... and grabbed me by both shoulders... I don't know what happened next." He said he felt a little afraid and searched for an exit but it was dark and he couldn't see anything. He said he was struggling to walk and can only remember sporadic images. "I'm chased... I can't stand up no matter how hard I'm trying... I could not feel my body... a hand with a knife with the blade pointed toward me... I hid in the wardrobe and yell and shouted as hard as I could... I threw books and other things to make a big noise... I lost my voice from shouting... my trousers were around my ankles, I try to pull them up but can't." Those, Ambach told the court through his interpreter, are his memories, "I can't put them in chronological order." Asked by his lawyer how the images end, Ambach replied: "I'm walking towards people who are in front of the house... they push me to the ground... and the whole thing starts again... down on the ground... unable to get up." Do you remember spitting? "No." Ambach says he felt mentally and physically bad during his subsequent police interview and did not realise the extent of Brown's injuries until almost the end of that interview. Cross-examination Crown lawyer Deborah Marshall then cross-examined Ambach. Asked about the gay joke his employer says he made, he said that was not true, that his boss had made a joke "but not about homosexual people." And the threat to kill him? "No, that's wrong." "Were you angry with your boss?" Marshall asked. "No." Ambach said his boss was good to him. "Why then," Marshall asked, "would he say untrue things?" "I don't know, maybe because I worked here illegally." Of the night of the attack, Ambach said there was nothing unusual about the taste of the drinks Brown mixed. "Nothing gritty about them?" "I don't remember." Was he offered drugs? "No." Had he taken drugs? "No." Marshall asked Ambach why, when he says he tried to leave, he had not been able to find the door, he replied "I don't know." "We've been there," said Marshall, referring to a court tour of sites connected to the case, "It's a small flat." "I don't know," responded Ambach, "I couldn't walk at that stage." Marshall observed that Ambach had not mentioned his inability to move to police, and suggested it was something he had made up. "No, I didn't make it up... during the interview I felt really bad... I didn't think it was relevant." Marshall also said Ambach had not mentioned to police about being inside a wardrobe, then asked if the hand he recalled holding a knife could have been his own. Ambach denied this. Asked again why he hadn't left the house if he had been so uncomfortable, Ambach stated through his interpreter "It was dark... I didn't know what vegetation there was... I thought I could just say goodbye in the normal way." Marshall sought to clarify how many times Ambach had gone outside onto a verandah, with the accused man responding that his recollections are "completely mixed" in his head. When the prosecution suggested he had been out on the verandah twice, not once shortly after arriving as he had claimed, he replied that it must have been twice. "It's important," the crown lawyer reminded him, "to tell the court what you remember, not what 'must' have happened." Ambach: "It happened 19 months ago and I was in a really bad condition for the [police] interview." Ambach: "I don't know" As this afternoon continued, Ambach claimed he had no memory of a neighbour calling out or offering to call the police, or of his throwing things out of the house, suggesting that if the neighbours said it happened "then, yes" it must have happened. A recollection of Brown chasing Ambach around a table was explored by Marshall: "It's not possible to chase someone around that table, is it Mr Ambach, because it was in the corner of the [room]." Ambach: "I don't know." Marshall: "And it's hard to believe a 69-year old man would be chasing you around a table." Ambach: "I remember very clearly that I escaped." The prosecution lawyer told Ambach that scientific evidence showed that there were bloodstains on the stairs before household items barricading the stairs had been thrown there. Marshall: "So you didn't barricade yourself to escape from Ronald Brown as at that time he was lying unconscious from severe head injuries..." Ambach said "yes," apparently indicating he understood what the lawyer was saying, though not necessarily agreeing with her. Marshall: "...so you went upstairs and just decided to trash the place because you were angry." Ambach: "No. If I had been angry only I would have left." Marshall then suggested to Ambach that he must have been able to move, contrary to his earlier evidence, in order to heap objects on the stairs, and further suggested that he was in fact aiming the assorted objects at Brown as he lay injured below. Ambach: "I was throwing the objects randomly, there was no target." Ambach says he did not remember how he came to be wearing Brown's shoes, as noticed by police on their arrival. He also denied saying "I should have killed him," as testified by a hospital nurse. "I am absolutely sure that I could not say such a thing," he told the court, "because I didn't know the grammar for the word 'should' at that stage." Shown a photograph of himself being taken to a cell by three police officers, Ambach was asked if the person was him. "I don't know," he said, adding: "it looks horrifying." As the afternoon court sitting drew to a close the crown suggested that a bottle of the sedative Lorazepam, found in the upstairs hallway, had been thrown there by Ambach when he ripped the bathroom vanity unit apart. Additionally, the crown suggested, "you were angry at Brown when he made sexual advances, you attacked him, realised what you had done, then went upstairs and wrecked the house." Ambach: "No." Ambach's trial in the Auckland High Court continues into next week. GayNZ.com Daily News staff - 30th June 2009
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 30th June 2009 - 6:14pm