It was a Sunday in January 1994. Pat Gillane got into his Volkswagen Jetta and drove to Dublin. On Thomas Street he met two strangers and asked them to "do a job for him" - to kill his wife.
The four men had just come from a visit to the Museum of Modern Art at Kilmainham. They had never been before and were pleased it was free to look around.
Christy Bolger, Mick Doyle, his brother John and another man called Christy Murray were all described in court as "down on their luck". Gillane spotted the four men on the street and slowed the car beside them.
Christy Bolger asked Gillane for a cigarette. He said he didn't smoke and offered to buy some. They got into the car, Christy in the front, Mick Doyle in the back.
He drove to a shop or pub on Thomas Street and bought 20 cigarettes. In statements to gardai Christy and Mick disagreed over the brand. Gillane asked if there was somewhere quiet they could talk. They told him to go to Basin Street Flats off Thomas Street.
There he asked them to kill his wife. Mick said he wanted a word in private with Christy. They got out of the car. Christy said he asked Mick "what kind of a son of a bitch" the man was. Mick said he thought the man was homosexual.
They told him no. And he said: "Ye're no fucking use to me anyway" and drove away.
It was not the first time Gillane asked someone to do this job. According to a Garda source, he approached a man he knew in Gort and asked him to murder Philomena. The man refused and gardai did not charge Gillane with soliciting this man.
The lives of Mick Doyle and Christy Bolger were far from ordinary. Christy was born outside Enniscorthy and has 40 convictions, including assault and indecent exposure. He lives on a disability allowance. Towards the end of his evidence he volunteered the information that he had had a microchip in his brain and believed that people could read his mind.
Mick, who receives a disability allowance, also has a criminal record and spends much of his life on the move. It was clear from their evidence that these men do not keep records of events in the way that other people might. But what happened that January Sunday was not the kind of thing that they forgot.
Especially when four months later the man who stopped them on Thomas Street appeared on the television news apparently grieving for his murdered wife.
Mick recognised him on a TV news report about the murder. Christy recognised him from a photograph in the Irish Independ- ent. For the first time in his life he went to a Garda station of his own accord and spoke to a garda he knew.
Reports of the less than happy home life of the Gordons and Gillanes had already spread in Galway. Four days after Mick Doyle gave a statement in Dublin, Gillane was arrested for questioning.
On the night of Sunday, May 15th, 1994 Gillane had phoned Loughlinstown Hospital, outside Dublin, where Philomena worked as a live-in cook for part of each week. He told them she had left for work the previous Wednesday.
Staff told gardai that an agitated man had phoned asking about her. That same day he went to Mountbellew Garda station and reported her missing. He returned to the Garda station a second time, accompanied by Bridie Gordon.
The fact that Philomena Gillane was married was a surprise to almost all the people she had worked with for almost 20 years.
On paper Pat and Philomena Gillane looked like they had everything. A son, John and another baby on the way, with the finishing touches being put to their dream house on his family land in Gort.
But the £45,000 they spent on the house came from Philomena's savings. It is believed that she had a further balance of around £20,000 in a number of accounts after her death.
She had claimed a small sum in compensation for an accident and the rest is believed to have been the result of 20 years of "being thrifty", i put it and saving every penny she earned.
Some of the facts of the case are now clear. Less than four months after Pat Gillane told two strangers he wanted his wife dead, she was found murdered.