The trial of a man accused of killing his wife 10 years ago has heard from the man she was having an affair with that they were planning to move in with each other and have a child.
It was the eighth day of the trial of John Diver, Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Dublin, who denies murdering his wife, Geraldine, at Robinhood Road, Clondalkin, on December 2nd, 1996.
Raymond Roche said that he and Ms Diver got on very well with each other, and within a short period of time started making plans for a future together. Ms Diver, who worked at the Coombe Women's Hospital, Dublin, was found with a tie around her neck in the front seat of her car outside a builders' providers around 10.40pm on December 2nd.
At the Central Criminal Court yesterday, Mr Roche said Ms Diver was a regular customer at the supermarket where he worked. He described his relationship with Ms Diver as "smooth".
She was "very easy-going" and got on well with his family and friends. Mr Roche said Ms Diver approached him after he returned from a holiday, and told him that she thought he had been transferred to another store. She also told him she had been going to the other store to see if he was there. On the night of her birthday, in September 1996, she turned up in the pub where he usually drank, and afterwards she gave him a lift home.
That night Ms Diver asked him if he would like to "date her". The relationship developed from there, and became sexual. In late November 1996, they spent a weekend at a B&B in the west of Ireland.
Mr Roche said Ms Diver told him that she was separated, was sleeping downstairs at her home, and had two children. Mr Roche, who was in his late 20s at the time, knew she was older, but thought that she was in her mid to late 30s. He said he never met John Diver, but did meet her two children.
Initially they used condoms but, in the weeks before her death, they stopped using them. Ms Diver, he said, wanted a baby with him before "it was too late for her".
Mr Roche told Brendan Grehan SC, for the accused, that Ms Diver "made all the running in the relationship, and was making plans for them", but that he did not mind because "everything was going so well". He said that he was at his local pub the night Ms Diver was found dead, watching a soccer match with some friends and relatives.
The trial continues.