Maltese police criticized after funeral of Nicolette Ghirxi, murdered by Irishman Edward Johnston

Nicolette was stabbed to death late last Sunday evening in her apartment in Swatar, Malta, by Johnston, who had a previous criminal record and had harassed her for months.

Johnston, from Dublin, was shot dead hours later following a standoff with police after he pointed a replica firearm at officers.

At her funeral mass on Saturday, celebrant Father Anton D'Amato said it had been very difficult for him to come to terms with what had happened to Nicolette Ghirxi.

“Why did Nicolette have to die unjustly?” he asked. “I still can't answer that question.”

“What kind of justice is it when such a vibrant person was murdered in this way? What kind of justice is this?”

Similar questions were asked to police by Nicolette's attorney, Joseph Borda, who this week released emails from April showing that Nicolette had reported Johnston's harassment to police.

In conversation with Times of Malta Borda told the newspaper that police did not adequately protect Nicolette by not responding to the harassment reports. They could also have acted after he ignored their requests to question him, the lawyer added.

“The crimes Johnston is alleged to have committed are punishable by prison time. Had there been a warrant, she might still be alive. How could the police tell her there was nothing they could do?” he asked.

He said the police had “allowed Johnston to play with them and make a fool of himself.”

Nicolette and Johnston were together for 18 months, but Johnston ended the relationship last December.

Borda, who had known Nicolette for 30 years, took over legal representation of her interests last April when fake social media profiles operated by Johnston began publishing personal information about her.

She reported these posts to the police and filed a complaint with the police's Gender-Based and Domestic Violence Unit.

An email exchange released by the lawyer details Johnston's derisive responses to police when they tried to question him.

In one of these cases, he responded under his business name “Edward Sambora”: “As I have already informed you, I am unable to attend. Tell the judge that I am away on business.”

“You just have to mark me as a risk and notify Interpol.

“I want to top up my tan in Dubai before I return to Malta.”

On April 23, Johnston told police he was about to board a flight to Dubai, “so I have to reschedule your interview, which was announced 48 hours in advance.”

Johnston suggested an online meeting.

“Would you like to do a Zoom call instead???” he joked.

He also hinted that he would return to Malta “in July for some fun in the sun”.

It is believed that Johnston returned to Malta in the first or second week of August.

As was revealed this week, the police should have taken Nicolette's concerns about Johnston more seriously, partly because of his criminal past.

He was found guilty of staging a bomb scare at a Glasgow restaurant in 2012 when he walked into the restaurant and told a waiter he had a bomb.

A standoff with the police ensued, during which he begged the police to shoot and kill him.

He was sentenced to 28 months in prison for the incident.

In the same year, he also staged a similar “suicide by cop” case in Liverpool by drunkenly carrying a toy Uzi-style submachine gun.

The court heard that night he told a witness: “Tonight I'm either going to kill someone or be killed.”

Although he presented himself as a very wealthy and successful day trader and life coach on various social media channels, these channels also revealed a darker side of Johnston's character.

Johnston ran an online academy for aspiring traders called the Sambora Trading Academy, where students had to pay hundreds of dollars to learn his trading tricks.

However, a former student called him an imposter and stated: “Edward Sambora is a fraud. Don't fall for his tricks or you will be duped.”

According to Nicolette's lawyer Borda, she told police on the Thursday before her murder that her Tinder account indicated that Edward Johnston was only a few miles away.

Police have since claimed that Nicolette did not want legal action taken against Johnston.

Her lawyer denies this.

“It is not true that she signed papers not to take action against him. If that were true, she would not have informed the police about his presence in Malta,” he said.

During a crime conference last Monday, police also said that Nicolette had declined in writing to undergo a domestic violence risk assessment because she did not feel she was in danger at the moment.

Borda believes people in similar situations to hers should be forced to do a risk assessment as standard. He said Nicolette, who he considered a friend, “couldn't take it any longer.”

Police could have saved their lives if they had issued an arrest warrant for Johnston, he said, because if they had done so, he would have been arrested immediately after landing in Malta.

If there had been an international arrest warrant, Johnston would have been arrested abroad and brought to Malta to face charges. But the system failed Nicolette, Borda said.