Murdered Romanian teenager Marioara Rostas went missing 18 days after she arrived in Ireland, the Central Criminal Court has heard. Churchgoer Martha Murphy said she saw the teenager begging on Lombard Street at around 1:30pm on Sunday January 6th in 2008.

She said she was very thin with sallow skin and had the appearance of a 13 or 14-year-old girl.

It is the prosecution's case that Marioara Rostas (18) got into a car with a man at around 2pm that afternoon at the busy junction behind Trinity College.

Alan Wilson (35) of New Street Gardens in Dublin denies killing the teenager at a house his sister rented in Brabazon Street in the Coombe on the 7th or 8th of January, 2008.

The court heard the house was fire damaged weeks later on February 29th and that gardai believe an accelerant such as fuel may have been used.

Bullet holes were found in the walls when the house was technically examined several months later as part of the investigation into Marioara's disappearance.

Father not understood by gardai

The jury has previously heard her body was discovered in a shallow grave in a wooded area of Kippure, Co. Wicklow in January 2012 - four years after she went missing.

She had been shot four times in the head.

With the aid of an interpreter, her father Dumitru Rostas gave evidence this afternoon that the family was begging in and around Pearse Street on the day she disappeared.

He said he went for food for about 20 minutes and when he returned she was gone. He said they waited for around three hours for her to show up.

At about 5pm, he went to a garda station to report his daughter as missing but could not make himself understood. She was reported missing three days later on January 9th 2008.

The trial resumes on Monday.