Mrs Catherine Nevin was yesterday accused of changing her evidence in an attempt to blacken the name of a former Sinn Fein member and of inventing a claim that her husband was an IRA member. This, according to prosecuting counsel at the Central Criminal Court, was "for the purpose of bringing a manufactured doubt to bear on perfectly straightforward facts".
She was also alleged to be "deliberately putting lies into the mouth of a dead person" during the second day of intense cross-examination. The 46-year-old widow of former Wicklow publican Tom Nevin denies charges of murder and soliciting to murder.
Prosecuting counsel, Mr Peter Charleton SC, said that whenever it came to a point in the evidence that wasn't convenient, Mrs Nevin simply denied it.
Mrs Nevin pleads not guilty to charges that on dates in 1989 she solicited John Jones; that in or about 1990 she solicited Gerry Heapes, and that on a date unknown in 1990 at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, she solicited William McClean to murder her husband.
The defendant denied that she had "cultivated a Sinn Fein connection" with a view to persuading an ex-IRA man, Gerry Heapes, to get someone to kill her husband. She said she was only telling what had happened and was in court to tell the truth.
Cross-examined again on her relationship with retired Garda Insp Tom Kennedy - which both she and he deny was sexual - Mrs Nevin told the trial that she never committed adultery and claimed her husband and Mr Kennedy were "exceptionally friendly with each other".
Challenged about a number of occasions where she and Tom Kennedy met for a drink or for a meal, she said: "There was no relationship. I would have thought in this day and age that people can have a meal together, a drink together, without people drawing inferences from it."
Repeatedly questioned about whether she met Mr Kennedy alone in the Horse & Hound Inn, Wexford, and had a meal with him there, Mrs Nevin replied: "I'd say the chances are I probably did, yes." She said she didn't know on how many occasions.
Mr Charleton also returned to cross-examining the defendant on her claim that Mr Nevin was a member of the IRA.
Counsel had earlier alleged that she had "laid a false trail" in her interviews with gardai following the murder when she named "at least seven people" as relevant to the investigation.
This was "a lot of people, a lot of possible suspects", Mr Charleton suggested. She said she just gave the gardai any information that might help them to find her husband's killers. Mr Charleton said that what puzzled him was why, "despite this plethora of people", there was no reference to the IRA or to Tom Nevin's alleged membership of it.
"It's very simple. I made a promise to my husband when he told me after we were three years married," the defendant said. "It was a solemn promise that I would never disclose it to anyone, and I didn't, until I told my legal team."
Challenged about telephone numbers for a former Sinn Fein member, John Jones, found during a Garda raid on May 18th, 1996, on a piece of paper in her bedside locker, she told the court that "certainly no telephone numbers were in my bedside locker". She said she didn't know of any reason why three car registration numbers were also found in her bedroom, one of which was that of Gerry Heapes.
"All I can say is that if cars were outside the premises, and our attention was drawn to it . . . by something unusual, we'd always take down the registrations of the cars and try to check them out if we could," she said.
Asked why the registration number of William McClean's car was found on another piece of paper, she said: "I cannot explain any of them being written down."
She told the trial that at one point she had considered hiring a private detective to investigate her husband's killing. She said she had at one time thought about it, but she never did hire a private investigator.
Earlier, Garda witnesses said that in interviews the accused said she had hired a private investigator but that nothing had turned up during his inquiries.
Mrs Nevin repeated her explanation, given in previous evidence, of why she crossed out the number of Gerry Heapes on a telephone address book found at the inn. She said that Mr Heapes came to the inn looking for a flat and she took down his number.
Later, Tom Nevin was "very, very annoyed" that Mr Heapes had come looking to rent a flat from them, she said. "I crossed out the number there and then."
Mrs Nevin said she could not explain why Det Garda Collins and Det Sgt Fergus O'Brien gave evidence that when they first saw the address book on April 12th, 1996, Gerry Heapes's name and number was not crossed out, but it was crossed out front and back when they saw it on May 18th. Mrs Nevin said: "I am not lying to you, I am not lying to the jury, I am not lying to your lordship."
Mrs Nevin also claimed her husband instructed that the mobile panic alarms at Jack White's Inn not be used "after the incident with Arklow", which she has alleged gave rise to "bad blood" between Arklow gardai and Jack White's Inn. The jury has heard that none of the Arklow gardai who have given evidence in the trial had any connection with this alleged incident, a sexual assault on a distant relative of Mrs Nevin.
Mr Charleton suggested to her that "this Arklow thing is a gigantic red herring you have introduced into this case". The accused said she was simply telling her husband's views after it.
"Tom's instructions were that the panic buttons were not to be used," she said, adding that the alarm buttons had been "taken away".
Reminded of the evidence of Det Garda James McCall that on the morning of the murder she told him a panic button was on the window ledge behind the bed, Mrs Nevin told counsel: "I couldn't have said it to him because I didn't know where the panic buttons were in the house."
The trial continues on Monday.