Mrs Catherine Nevin was found bound, gagged and slumped inside the front door of her home when gardai answered a panic alarm call on the night of her husband's murder, the Central Criminal Court was told yesterday.
Mrs Nevin (48) denies the murder of her husband, Mr Thomas Nevin (54), on March 19th, 1996, in their home at Jack White's Inn, Ballinapark, near Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow. She has also pleaded not guilty to soliciting three named men to murder him on dates in and around 1989 and 1990.
The jury also heard that gardai found all windows and doors secured except for the front door when they searched the premises on the night of the killing.
The prosecution has alleged that Mr Nevin died during what was a botched robbery designed to conceal a contract killing carried out at his wife's behest. Mrs Nevin was tied up in the incident, during which over £15,000 was taken.
Det Garda Paul Comiskey, of Arklow, told Mr Peter Charleton SC, prosecuting, that he received a call at 4.35 a.m. on March 19th, 1996, and arrived at Jack White's Inn at 4.45 a.m. His colleague, Garda Martin MacAndrew, went ahead of him to the front door, which was slightly ajar.
When he followed him in, he saw Mrs Nevin lying "slumped on the floor" behind the door. Her first words to him were: "He came into the bedroom. He had a knife. He had a knife and a hood over his head."
Det Garda Comiskey said Mrs Nevin's wrists were tied behind her back. The first tie was a soft blue dressing-gown belt, which was easily removed. Underneath were two head bands in the county colours of Wicklow and Wexford. These were tied tightly so he had to go to the breakfast room for a knife to cut them.
When he cut the ties, he noticed they had left red marks on the wrist. "She was very dazed. Her speech was very low, very low-key. She was scantily clad in a purple kind of silky shirt and white panties."
He said when the two gardai went to lift her, Mrs Nevin winced as though in pain. They brought her to a sitting room and
put her on a couch. The witness said he noticed a nylon stocking hanging loosely around her neck. "Garda MacAndrews told me this stocking was holding in a black pair of panties as a gag in her mouth."
Mrs Nevin told him she was cold, so Garda Comiskey said he went upstairs and removed a quilt from her bed and brought it to her. On the couch, she whispered to him: "Where's Tom?" and also said: "Dominic is gone. Dominic was here." He took Dominic to be Sgt Richard Dominic McElligott, a previous witness.
Mrs Nevin again asked where Tom was a number of times and she was still complaining of the cold, so he took his patrol jacket off and put it on her.
He also saw a wooden jewellery box on the floor of the lounge, its drawers scattered around it, and items of jewellery on the stairs and in the hallway. He and Garda MacAndrew began looking around the house and found Mr Nevin's body on the kitchen floor.
Cross-examined by Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, defending, Det Garda Comiskey agreed his first report on finding Mrs Nevin had stated: "She looked to be in shock and her eyes were rolling in her head."
He agreed that his original statement said: "All the time, her eyes were rolling and her head fell several times." This motion was more like a "nodding", the witness said. "It just nodded. It wasn't hopping off her chest or anything like that." The omission of this detail from his later full statement was "just an oversight on my part".
Dr Elizabeth Collins, of Wicklow town, said Mrs Nevin rang the practice at which she worked on the morning of March 15th looking for "a spur-of-the-moment appointment". The visit was not an emergency, but she wrote out a prescription.
Garda Gerald O'Donovan arrived at the bar at 4.55 a.m. He agreed with Mr MacEntee that Mrs Nevin was "deeply distressed" and when she asked for Tom she made to get up from the couch a number of times as though to look for him.
The State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, put an estimate on the time of death as "some time between midnight and 4 a.m."
The trial continues.