Aivars Sondors on trial on three charges of assisting an offender

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Aivars Sondors’s trial on three charges of assisting an offender was underway at the Central Criminal Court before Mr Justice Paul Coffey. His arraignment took place on 19 June 2017. He pleaded not guilty to each charge. Eight men and four women were sworn as jurors. The proceedings were reported on 19 June 2017.

The alleged offences date to 9 or 10 September 2013. Mr Sondors is accused of obstructing efforts to apprehend or prosecute Marius Gaizutis while knowing or believing that he had unlawfully killed Audrius Butkus, aged 44.

One count concerns taking Mr Butkus’s body from a Marsh Road house in Drogheda and putting it into the sea at Mornington Beach. Another concerns cleaning the Marsh Road scene. The third concerns disposing of material from the scene at Burke House, Mathew’s Lane, Drogheda, including clothing, carpet, bottles, tins, a bin bag and a nail brush.

Colman Fitzgerald SC, defending, said Mr Sondors accepted that he had carried out the alleged acts. The defence maintained that his circumstances had put him under duress, leaving that question for the jury to decide.

Patrick Gageby SC, prosecuting, told jurors that Marius Gaizutis’s conviction for murdering Audrius Butkus dated to 1 May 2015. Mr Sondors’s trial was expected to run for seven days.