Shortly before 8 p.m. on March 20th last year, gardai arrived at Coolamber Park in the south Dublin suburb of Templeogue, the home of Italian restaurant owner, Franco Sacco.
They went upstairs to the master bedroom where they found the body of 29-year-old Sacco lying face down on the bed. He had been shot through the head and the top part of his skull was blown almost away.
The corpse was naked, apart from a singlet vest and a gold chain around the neck.
When the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, arrived around midnight, he found fragments of skull bone in the toilet bowl of an adjoining bedroom and 20 small lead pellets. Three pieces of human skull bone were found in a refuse sack near the body. A towel in the bedroom contained casing which holds the pellets of lead together before discharge. Tests later linked the wad with Sacco's own shotgun, which he used as a sporting weapon.
Just 11 days later, gardai arrested a 15-year-old girl who lived with Franco Sacco and his wife, Anna Maria Sacco, in the middle-class housing estate. The teenager subsequently pleaded guilty, but the State say she was acting on behalf of Anna Maria Sacco. On Saturday the jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge of murder, which Anna Maria Sacco denied.
During her trial the jury at the Central Criminal court heard how Franco and Anna Maria started dating when she was just 13 years old. He was portrayed in court as an abusive, domineering man who was frequently violent. During their courtship, Anna Maria said he gave her the "odd kick, the odd punch".
Despite this, she had few misgivings about marrying him. The couple married on Anna Maria's 19th birthday and they lived off the chip shop in Rathfarnham, which Sacco rented from Anna Maria's father, Luigi, for £500 a week. The two-year marriage was marred by violence, infidelity and marital rape. Anna Maria left Franco a couple of times but always returned, partly, she told the jury, because of Italian convention. "You make your bed and you lie on it", she said.
Anna Maria Sacco has just turned 22 but looks considerably older. When her husband was killed she was four weeks pregnant. Her daughter, Francesca, is now six months old. Throughout her trial, the young widow was supported by her Italian father, Luigi, and her Donegal-born mother, Lorna. Luigi Sacco, who owns a string of chip shops, was a first cousin of Franco Sacco.
Luigi Sacco brought Franco from Cassino, in his native Italy to Ireland when Franco was 18. He lived in the Sacco family home in Kimmage. He and Anna Maria had been in a relationship for a year before Anna Maria told her mother. The family did not approve.
A week before the murder, Franco and Anna Maria had a row. He raped her and pressed his belted hand into her eye, leaving a red mark. The teenage girl who now awaits sentencing for her part in the killing, said: "I can't stand what he has done".
In the spring of 1996, Anna Maria had a brief affair with a Tallaght barman, Mr Peter Gifford. That summer, she asked him to get someone to kill her husband, according to his testimony. "It was probably when she was beaten up a with a baseball bat" a few months earlier, Gifford told the court.
Anna Maria raised the subject with him again, in September, and finally in November. The Wednesday night before the killing, Gifford said he, Anna Maria and the teenager joked about killing Franco. Gifford said he never took it seriously. The teenage girl, whom, the jury was told eventually pulled the trigger, said she would do it herself. Anna Maria denied the conversation took place.
Anna Maria joined her husband in bed and they had sex "because he always expected it". On the morning of the killing, as Anna Maria was getting out of bed, Franco reminded her to open the chip shop on time. She was downstairs tying her shoelaces when she heard a loud bang. As she went to the stairway the teenage girl told her, "I'm after killing Franco".
"I kept thinking no, everything's okay" Anna Maria said in court. When she entered the bedroom, all she could see was blood, and she could not get out of the room fast enough.
According to Anna Maria, she spent the rest of the day in a confused state. She left the house as she wasn't thinking straight and when she returned, she found the police already there.
The State painted a very different picture. They alleged that Anna Maria Sacco wanted out of her violent marriage and used a vulnerable teenager to do it. Using a contested statement given by Anna Maria to Det Sgt Jim Costello, Anna Maria told gardai she paid a man £1,000 to kill Franco.
"I did want Franco killed and asked three separate people on several occasions to kill him", the statement read.
When the plan failed, she turned to the teenager who eventually pulled the trigger, the statement said. The girl said "yes", took Franco's shotgun out and put it under his bed. Anna Maria then went upstairs, made love to Franco and then went to sleep.
The teenager was not called to give evidence because she has not yet been sentenced.
The State case hinged on the crucial statement made in Sundrive Road Garda station four days after Sacco's body was discovered. Anna Maria claims she made the statement under duress, that she was verbally abused on her way to the station, and physically assaulted in custody. The gardai deny the claims.
According to the contested statement, Anna Maria panicked after the killing and ran out of the house. She and the girl drove first to Peter Gifford's house and then to her mother's restaurant in Ranelagh. Gifford described how she and the teenager arrived at his house when he was still in bed. Anna Maria was on the doorstep "nervous and jumpy". She told him the girl had shot Franco. He agreed to help to get rid of the body, but did not do so.
Later Anna Maria, her sister Catriona and the girl arrived back at the four-bedroom house at Coolamber Park. There they attempted to clean up the murder scene. Anna Maria's statement describes how she attempted to scrub the blood-splattered walls with Flash spray but after a while, she couldn't take any more.
Last Friday, the day the evidence concluded in the three-week trial, Anna Maria Sacco should have been celebrating her third wedding anniversary and her 22nd birthday.
The teenager who confessed to shooting Franco Sacco and who is described by Anna Maria as her "best friend" is due for sentencing next month.