Tears rolled down Sharon Collins's face during a relentless 75 minutes in the witness box, writes Kathy Sheridan
STEPPING UP for her second day of evidence, Sharon Collins presented a pale, drained-looking shadow of the bouncy, smiling exterior of the day before.
She was facing a second bout with prosecuting counsel, Una Ní Raifeartaigh.
By the time it ended some 75 minutes later, she was dabbing her tears with a stenographer's tissue.
Early on, she faced suggestions that her two sisters had adopted Irish names in court, in an effort to distance themselves from her.
"Oh they're really into Irish", said Ms Collins. "I'd suggest that your sister who was named here yesterday as Ui Liduihigh is known locally as Liddy . . . ", said counsel. "They're very embarrassed by the whole affair, I'm sure they are," said Ms Collins.
Later, while focusing on a forensic examination of e-mail traffic through various computers, the jury learned that she once ran a franchise for fitted kitchens and taught aerobics.
Hadn't she also been involved in some kind of pyramid scheme, inquired counsel? "Oh yes . . . a multi-level scheme", said Ms Collins.
The e-mail traffic from Sharon Collins's account revealed a user with a penchant for astrology websites, weight loss products, travel sites, parental equality and women's aid sites, a couple of banks, a guide to wills and queries about inheritance and co-habitee rights.
"One might say someone obsessively searching for information on inheritance rights . . ." said counsel, about one session. Then minutes later, at 17.17, she noted, "the user of that computer was going into Lying Eyes . . . so either it's you or someone setting you up by initiating these kinds of searches . . ."
"It's not me anyway", said Ms Collins.
She had used "a lot of emotional manipulation" in her letters to the DPP, to get him to drop her case, said Ms Ní Raifeartaigh, letters which counsel summed up as, "my son is at risk, my mother is at risk, various people may commit suicide . . . PJ may get a heart attack . . . And whose fault would that be?"
With tears rolling down her face, Ms Collins responded: "I had been hauled out of my home, I was questioned at length at the Garda station. I was kept overnight. All kinds of allegations were thrown at me about things I would never do. I was out of my home, my family were in bits, I was absolutely shattered. I was not trying to be manipulative, I was trying to explain the damage that was done to me."
"You wrote to the DPP against the advice of your solicitor at the time . . . but with the arrogance we've come to expect of you, you decided that you're different to everybody else. You were trying to use what you've always used now and in your life - emotional manipulation. You got up here not to give useful facts but to sit there smiling at the jury and manipulate them into thinking that a woman who smiled like that couldn't plot to kill her husband and his two sons".
"I'm not smiling", said Ms Collins.
"Yes, but you were smiling yesterday," said Ms Ní Raifeartaigh.
"I'm not trying to manipulate the jury. I was extremely nervous and sometimes I'm smiling when I'm nervous. I'm here to tell the truth. I've always, always told the truth. I'm not trying to manipulate anybody," she said.
She returned to her seat where her two young sons rose to embrace her, kiss her cheek and whisper comforting words.