Ms Anna Maria Sacco told a Central Criminal Court jury yesterday she had not got a 15-year-old girl to murder her husband at their home in Templeogue last year.
She said gardai "guided" her through a statement of admission, which she only made to get out of the station. She denied she wanted the 15-year-old, who has already pleaded guilty to the murder, to "take all the blame".
Ms Sacco (21) took the stand as the first witness for the defence. She has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, Mr Franco Sacco (29), at their home at Coolamber Park, Templeogue, on March 20th last year.
A tearful Ms Sacco told her counsel, Mr Barry White SC, she was 13 when she started going out with Franco. During their courtship there was "the odd kick, the odd punch", but she had no misgivings about marrying him.
She had left him for short periods after the marriage but came back. "Being brought up in the Italian society, you make your bed and you lie in it," she told Mr White. She was four weeks pregnant when arrested for his murder and now had a six-month-old baby girl. Asked who the father was, Ms Sacco said: "My husband, Franco".
She agreed she had an affair with Mr Peter Gifford. "I'm not proud of it," she said. She had not asked Peter to get someone to kill Franco. "Peter suggested to me many times that he could get this type of thing done." She thought he was saying it through drink and told him "no way".
A week before his death her husband rowed with her, "forced himself upon me, to have sex" and pushed a belt wrapped around his hand against her eye so that she had "a red mark" there.
The next day the teenage girl, who was living the house, said she had heard the row and "she told me she was going to kill him".
The night before her husband's death she was in their chip shop when Mr Gifford, the teenage girl, and Ms Sacco's sister Catriona were "laughing" and talking about killing Franco. The girl had said, "yeah, we'll chop him up and stick him in the oven".
She denied she had talked with the girl later about killing Franco or knew of the girl taking Franco's shotgun upstairs.
She joined her husband in bed and they made love. She got up at 11. She denied discussing killing Franco with the girl again. Ms Sacco said she was downstairs "when I heard Bang!". The girl came down saying, "I'm after killing Franco". She froze, then panicked, then ran to her car. The girl got into the car "as usual, as normal". After going to Mr Gifford's house she drove home with the girl and Catriona. Catriona came down with "something" on a yellow duster. Her sister was laughing and she had said "go away from me with that". She went to her mother's restaurant in Ranelagh. Catriona told her mother Franco had dead and the girl said she had shot him.
After going to her sister Joanna's house they returned to Coolamber Park and she went upstairs. "I kept thinking no, he's asleep, everything's okay," she said. In the bedroom it was completely dark. "I saw all the blood, I didn't actually see him."
She had driven to Mr Gifford's house because the teenage girl asked her to. Mr Charleton put it to her that she was asking the jury to believe she was being led by a 15-and-a-half-year-old unmarried teenager who lived in her house and worked in her shop. Ms Sacco said she "couldn't think straight at the time".
When she was at her house and her sister came down with a yellow cloth with a piece of her husband's body on it, she was either playing some weird joke or showing her a piece of her husband's body, Mr Charleton suggested. Ms Sacco agreed her sister had been laughing. She said she now knew that "it was a piece of Franco's skull" on the cloth.
But her sister would have to be "nuts" to do that, Mr Charleton said. It was not for her to say, Ms Sacco answered, but went on to agree with the prosecutor.
She denied Mr Charleton's suggestions that she was "pretending to cry" and "putting on an act" for the jury.
She accepted she had lied at first to gardai about her whereabouts on March 20th but said she was afraid she would be blamed.
She told the jury she did not tell the girl to kill her husband. "We were getting on okay. We were trying to have a child. I had no reason to do this."
The case for the defence concludes today before a jury and Mr Justice O'Higgins.