If Mrs Catherine Nevin was telling the truth then more than 24 witnesses in her trial for the murder of her husband were "barefaced liars" or "fantasists", a State lawyer told a jury yesterday.
Junior counsel for the DPP began to sum up the prosecution case against Mrs Nevin after 30 days of evidence in her trial on charges of murder and soliciting to murder her husband, the co-owner of Jack White's Inn.
The jury was told that "the central issue" they must decide was whether the murder of Tom Nevin was "organised by Catherine Nevin and done at her behest".
The murder was "an assassination" and carried out in that style, the prosecution claimed. They pointed to the use of big-game shot-cartridges, the point-blank-range shooting of Mr Nevin, and the absence of any evidence that an attempt was made to tie him up or subdue him as proof of this.
They claimed his wife either let in his killers herself, or cut them keys to get into the inn. The assassins had "inside information and superb intelligence", and were confident they would not be disturbed or detected by the time they reached Dublin in Tom Nevin's car. They said it was significant that Mrs Nevin was not shot herself, but was "left as a loose end" tied up upstairs.
The prosecution claimed that when a disguise of a botched robbery failed to divert attention from Mrs Nevin, some other reason for an assassination-type killing had to be found by her, and it was then that the IRA "was jumped into the case".
"There were two bogeymen raised in this case: one was the Arklow gardai, the other was the IRA", said Mr Tom O'Connell, prosecuting.
Arklow gardai were among a number of people "defamed" and "vilified" by the accused, he claimed. And while the allegation that the IRA carried out the killing was not said directly, it was insinuated, because it was said that Tom Nevin had been a long-time member of the IRA, and a money-launderer for it, too.
Of the late Tom Nevin, "not only has his life been snuffed out, but also his character has now been assassinated", Mr O'Connell said.
And referring to persistent evidence regarding "this business of affairs", Mr O'Connell said: "It is not the fact of the affairs. We are not heaping any moral opprobrium on Mrs Nevin, but they are relevant in so far as they show the nature of her relationship with her husband, but in particular they show her capacity for lying."
Mrs Nevin (49) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, Tom (54), on March 19th, 1996, in their home at Jack White's Inn, Ballinapark, Co Wicklow.
She also denies that on dates in 1989 she solicited Mr John Jones, that in or about 1990 she solicited Mr Gerry Heapes and that on a date unknown in 1990 at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, she solicited Mr William McClean, to murder her husband.
The prosecution claimed that Mrs Nevin's initial reluctance to make a statement to gardai was because she did not want to commit herself to anything in writing. "She wanted to leave it all loose and vague and have herself treated as a victim."
Mrs Nevin's interviews with gardai and her subsequent statement to them were indicative of the fact that she was making up a story, Mr O'Connell said.
He claimed that the accused had in effect labelled some 24 people who have given evidence in court as either liars or fantasists. "Implicitly she is saying that these people are either telling barefaced lies or they are fantasists".
Among these 24 were Assistant Commissioner Jim McHugh, who told the court that Mrs Nevin told him her husband had beaten her, causing her to be hospitalised on one occasion, and also that Tom Nevin drank a litre of whiskey a day and that the couple had contemplated separating some seven years before his murder. Mrs Nevin has denied that she said these things.
He told the jury that it had a right to draw inferences not just from the evidence, but also from Mrs Nevin's demeanour in the witness box. He suggested that "when she was coming to the tricky parts, she dropped her voice, was audibly sniffling, but without any tears - and on the tricky bits, she was significantly low on detail".
The case was "littered with circumstantial evidence", he alleged, listing several categories. The first was evidence of preparations for the commission of the crime, including the allegation that Mrs Nevin ensured no staff were on the premises that night, and the failure of Tom Nevin to lodge the pub takings in Wicklow AIB on Friday March 15th, 1996, days before his murder.
The second category was what counsel called "unexplained circumstances of suspicion", including behaviour outside the routine at Jack White's Inn. "The simulation and fabrication of evidence" was the third category, including what the prosecution allege was the "staged scene" after the killing.
"We say the motive for the murder in this case was greed and Mrs Nevin's hatred for her husband", said Mr O'Connell.
Another category was the evidence of soliciting, the evidence that Catherine Nevin had plotted to kill her husband over six years before. The final category was the "accelerated inheritance on Mr Nevin's property", said counsel.
He told the jury that in normal circumstances when a spouse died without children and without a will, "the surviving spouse takes all". He pointed to the evidence that an application for probate by his widow was pending on Mr Nevin's estate.
Of the three men who gave evidence for the prosecution of having been solicited by Catherine Nevin to murder, Mr O'Connell asked the jury "why any of those people should come here to tell lies about this". It did not serve their interest or any interest for Mr John Jones, Mr Gerry Heapes or Mr Willie McClean to come before the court, he said.
What led gardai to the three men was material evidence found in Mrs Nevin's bedroom, counsel said. If Mrs Nevin was right in her assertion that the pieces of paper linking her to the men were not in her bedside locker, then the gardai who said they found them there were lying.
It was self-evident common sense that if a person was "in the marketplace shopping for a contract killer to kill their husband" and was proposing a certain method, and if the husband was then killed in that way, this, taken with other circumstantial evidence, was "coercive and compelling evidence of guilt".
He pointed to details of evidence given by Mr Jones, Mr Heapes and Mr McClean, and asked how they could have known these things if they were not told by Mrs Nevin.
He said that the three men were also subjected to "casual calumny". Mr McClean was upgraded from a person with minor convictions for cheque fraud into a counterfeiter who printed money. Mr Jones was elevated into "a bomb-maker" and Mr Heapes, already a convicted armed robber and ex-IRA man, was made out to be running a protection racket.
This claim that he was an enforcer for a protection racket, put to Mr Heapes on Mrs Nevin's instructions, was withdrawn during her direct evidence, counsel said. By that time Mrs Nevin was claiming her husband was in the IRA, and it would have been "incongruous and absurd" to suggest that an ex-IRA man was down at Jack White's Inn looking for protection money from an allegedly active IRA man.
Counsel said that the soliciting evidence was "so closely mixed up" with the evidence of the actual murder that it formed a continuous chain of relevant evidence.
The case continues today.