A man who is accused of strangling his wife told gardaí he did not believe she would kill herself and leave her son, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Det Sgt Michael Gibbons told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that when Brian Kearney was arrested on March 3rd, 2006, he said he could not accept the possibility that his wife had killed herself.
"I find it hard to believe, or impossible, under the circumstances." When asked if he killed his wife, Mr Kearney replied: "I didn't do it. I didn't fight with her. We didn't have rows."
In an earlier voluntary witness statement made on March 1st, 2006, Det Sgt Gibbons said Mr Kearney told him: "I can't understand it. I am baffled. She loved . . . [ her son]. She wouldn't leave him for a moment. She would never leave him."
Det Sgt Gibbons told the court Mr Kearney said he was aware that his wife was applying for a legal separation. He said they were at "the very early stages" of a divorce but initially denied receiving letters from Ms Kearney's solicitors.
Mr Kearney did agree that he had received a solicitor's letter expressing his wife's reluctance to rent the next-door property.
Asked why she would need to arrange a legal letter to discuss the house when she had already made it clear to him that she didn't want to rent the house, he replied: "We hadn't decided what we were going to do with it. The building wasn't completed."
However he agreed that even so he had arranged to have the house advertised for rent.
He acknowledged that Ms Kearney had intended to move into the house herself.
"Yes, it was part of the settlement we had discussed, her moving in there. I was reasonably happy with it other than it being claustrophobic - us living next door to each other."
He had made inquiries about renting the house in case the relationship had got back on track.
During this earlier statement Mr Kearney said he had first met his wife 17 years previously when they both worked for Yamaguchi Electric Ltd in Mulhuddart.
Ms Kearney was working as a chef in the kitchen. "She was 21, I was 31. I thought she was older. She looked so in control of the place." Mr Kearney told gardaí he was living in Ballinteer with his then 3½-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
After going out for a few years, Ms Kearney moved into the house in Ballinteer and they got engaged.
On a visit to Palma, Majorca, to look at boats they decided to view some houses. They bought a hotel for €2.2 million in both their names. Mr Kearney told gardaí that Ms Kearney sold the house she then owned in Shankill in Dublin and invested the money in the hotel.
"During the holiday season she lives there March to October . . . [ their son] lives there with her. I go back and forth. It's going well," Mr Kearney told gardaí.
He said when he was in Majorca, their son would sleep in a bed with him and his wife. He said that when they returned to Ireland they tried to make the child sleep in his own room but he wouldn't so "from a sexual point of view we hadn't been together since mid-December".
Det Sgt Gibbons said Mr Kearney had said that he and his wife had been on holiday as a family for Christmas 2005 to Italy and Austria.
Shortly after their return, Mr Kearney said he received the first solicitor's letter. "She sent me a solicitor's letter looking for a divorce . . . I was in shock."
Mr Kearney told gardaí he asked his wife to go for marriage counselling, but she refused.
On the day before her death Ms Kearney had been out with their son until about 9pm or 9.30pm. When she got home she asked Mr Kearney to put the child to bed while she went upstairs to answer e-mails concerning the business.
Before she went upstairs Mr Kearney said they spoke for a while in the hall outside her bedroom and he briefly entered the room to go after the child who was playing with a ball.
He told gardaí he fell asleep reading him a bedtime story and slept through the night, only waking once to take the child to the toilet. He didn't notice anything wrong on this occasion.
The trial continues.