Benny Moore told Carol Coulter how a meeting for a casual drink turned into a murder charge.
In some ways it is difficult to believe that Benny Moore is almost 80. He is elegantly dressed, favouring colourful ties and a hat worn at a jaunty angle. He is courteous and charming, a great raconteur with a deep rumble of a laugh.
But he is also almost 20 stone in weight, stiff, and moves with difficulty. He breathes heavily, and it is obvious that he is not as fit as he once was.
But this does not deter him from enjoying himself. He has always loved travelling, from his days as a merchant seaman when he travelled around the world over a dozen times, and has told his family that the day he puts away his travelling bag is the day he's dead. He was a frequent visitor to the Isle of Man where he had numerous friends, both among local people and Irish expatriots.
He left Dingle for the island in good spirits on October 25th last year, as he had done for about 12 years. He was going for the annual "Irish weekend" that took place over the bank holiday weekend.
He would be travelling with friends who were also regulars. There would be drinking and music on the boat and in the pubs on the island. "The craic used to be very, very good," he said.
He spent Friday and Saturday nights drinking and listening to the singing competitions that were a feature of the Irish weekend. On Sunday night, he had arranged to meet a woman he had met once previously, when she was introduced to him by a mutual friend.
She was Maureen Fox, a white Zimbabwean aged 38 who had lived on the island for about a year. She worked as a kitchen porter at the Hawthorn Inn, Greeba.
They met shortly before 7 p.m. on the night of Sunday, October 27th, in the Mannin Hotel, where he regularly stayed. However, he was in no mood for another late night, and said he wanted to go to bed early. She asked him if she could stay the night, and would he wake her at 6 a.m. He agreed. "I was never asleep at 6 o'clock in my life," he told The Irish Times.
They had a few drinks and at about 8.30 p.m they went to his room. According to the pathology reports, Ms Fox had been engaged in some kind of sexual activity in the five or six hours preceding her death, but there was no evidence of sexual intercourse.
They both fell asleep. Benny was woken up later that night by the sound of Ms Fox being sick.
"I was asking her, 'Are you all right?' and getting no answer. I went down to the desk and asked for a doctor. The receptionist said she was a nurse and she came up. She asked me to wait outside and I sat outside in the hall.
"The next thing was policemen came. I was answering their questions the best I could. The next thing was he said you have to come with me to the station. I don't know how long the questions went on there.
"The next thing he turned around and said, 'I'm charging you with murder'. I didn't even know she was dead."
The duty advocate that night was Ms Pam Pringle, who was called to the police station. She made Benny aware of his rights, and the next day she contacted fellow advocate, Ms Louise Byrne, who specialises in criminal law, and jokes that she is known as "the murder lady" in the Isle of Man.
At first Benny just thought it was a mistake, and did not contact his family until the evening of the following Tuesday.
There is no automatic right to bail in the Isle of Man, and bail is unheard of where there is a murder charge, so he was held in custody in the local prison, where conditions include slopping out. He did get bail on December 18th, the first person charged with murder to do so, and then had to stay in an approved hostel under strict conditions.
Was he depressed at all, either in prison or when unable to leave the island?
"Yerra, not really. I'm a happy-go-lucky fellow," he said. Later this week he will return to Dingle "for a few days anyway".