Gillane was identified by Mr Christopher Bolger and Mr Michael Doyle as the man who drove up to them in a car on a Sunday afternoon in January 1994 and asked them to murder someone. They said they recognised him respectively from a photograph in the Irish Independent and on an RTE television news programme in May 1994.
Mr Bolger said Gillane asked them to kill "a woman who worked in a hospital" while Mr Doyle told the jury he asked them to murder "his wife".
Mr Eamonn Leahy SC, defending, argued in his closing speech to the jury that Gillane should be acquitted on the evidence of Mr Bolger alone. He said Mr Bolger had described the man who approached them as having a moustache and hazel eyes. The evidence from Gillane himself to the jury on the fifth day of the trial that he never had a moustache in his life and had blue eyes was unrebutted and unchallenged by the prosecution and was therefore a fact.
There were other contradictions in the prosecution case which called for the acquittal of his client. There was also the fact that the name of Philomena Gillane was never mentioned by anyone as the person who was allegedly to be murdered.
Mr Leahy said that both Mr Bolger and Mr Doyle first told the gardai that the man who approached them asked them to kill "a woman". Later, Mr Doyle claimed the man asked them to kill his wife while Mr Bolger throughout his evidence insisted the man said it was "a woman who worked in a hospital".
In his evidence on the third day of the hearing, Mr Doyle said he thought the request to kill someone was "a big joke". They asked Gillane why he wanted the woman killed and he replied it was because she was threatening to take everything he had.
Both Mr Doyle and Mr Bolger said they told Gillane that they would not murder any woman for him, and he left saying they were "no f . . . good" to him. Neither man paid any more attention to the matter until the publicity surrounding Mrs Gillane's death the following May.
Mr Bolger told the jury he spent some months in Cork Prison between January and May 1994 and had been released only a short time when the matter arose.
Sometime after that he was in Mountjoy jail on another sentence and was shown a video of the RTE news coverage that Mr Doyle had seen. He again recognised the man who had spoken to him and Mr Doyle in January.
During his cross-examination by Mr Leahy on the second day of the trial, Mr Bolger claimed that people could read his mind because he had "a microchip which is connected to my mouth was placed in my skull when I was 28".
Replying to Judge Mathews on this point, Mr Bolger repeated he had been given a "microchip" during a head operation by a brain surgeon in the Mater Hospital when he was 28. He said he was now 48 years old.
The court was told he had 40 criminal convictions and had been detained in the Central Mental Hospital five or six times.
Mr Doyle told the jury he was called "a liar" three or four times by Gillane when he identified him in Mill Street Garda station in Galway as the man who asked him to kill his wife. He was asked then also in Gillane's presence if he had killed Mrs Gillane and he replied "No".
Both men told the jury they lived in hostels in Dublin and sometimes in other parts of the country. They said Gillane approached them in the Heuston Station-Royal Hospital area of Dublin. Gillane bought them cigarettes and asked them if they were working and where they lived.
Mr Doyle said Gillane drove them to the pub to buy the cigarettes. He said he got into the back seat and Mr Bolger into the front passenger seat. Gillane gave them one cigarette each when he came back to the car and put the packet on the dash in front of him.
Gillane then asked them if they would "do a job for him". When he said what he wanted, they got out of his car and spoke privately about it. Mr Doyle said he then asked Gillane if he was a homosexual or if he wanted a woman. He told him there were plenty of prostitutes about if he wanted a woman.
Gillane replied he wasn't a homosexual and didn't want a woman. He again asked them if they were going to do "this job" for him because if they were not they were no good to him. He also asked if they knew anyone else who might do it.
When the news of Mrs Gillane's death broke, Mr Doyle said Mr Bolger spoke to Det Garda Alan Baily - whom he was friendly with - about the matter in the Bridewell station. He went to the station later the same day and also told Det Garda Baily about it.
Both witnesses agreed when cross-examined by Mr Leahy that their statements were read over to them by Det Sgt Joe Breslin on the morning of the first two days of the trial. That was at their request.