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A father-of-eight accused of bludgeoning a German national to death with a statuette after a sexual encounter was linked to the 15-year-old crime after a DNA database match tied him to the crime scene.
Former taxi driver Naji Fakhreddine, 68, is accused of murdering Bernd Lehmann inside his Sydney home after he was traced to the dead man through re-examined forensic evidence.
Lehmann was killed in 2008 on the day he was to fly to Germany to take care of his elderly mother.
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The body of the 66-year-old was found lying face down in the doorway next to a bloodied statuette inside his Ashfield apartment on Valentine's Day, February 14.
Opening the Crown case on Tuesday, prosecutor Sally Traynor said Fakhreddine attacked Lehmann after a sexual encounter and bludgeoned him numerous times to the head with the 2.7kg statuette.
Fakhreddine's fingerprints were found on the bloodied object, which was believed to be the weapon used in the brutal attack, the jury was told.
Traynor said his semen was also detected in the mouth of the deceased, while his DNA was traced on cigarettes found on a coffee table nearby.
While she acknowledged the crown case was a circumstantial one, she urged jurors to consider the total weight of the evidence.
Traynor said the evidence pointed to Fakhreddine performing oral sex on Lehmann some hours before he died.
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Fakhreddine's fingerprints were found on the bloodied statuette, the jury was told.
The court heard a familial search of a DNA database in 2021 linked material from the crime scene to a profile for Fakhreddine's son.
Police later obtained a DNA sample from the accused killer, which matched forensic evidence collected from Lehmann's apartment, Traynor said.
Defence barrister Jennifer Ellis urged the jury to be patient and to keep an open mind.
"It is like a jigsaw puzzle where the Crown will ask you to put all the pieces together," she said.
"The Crown will suggest to you how to look at the jigsaw puzzle … but the Crown will need to exclude all reasonable hypotheses consistent with Fakhreddine's innocence."
Ellis said the prosecution's case was hampered by the death of potentially key witnesses, including two neighbours who said they noticed a suspicious male standing outside Lehmann's building on the evening before his murder.
The trial continues.
