The teenage girl who shot Dublin chip shop owner Mr Franco Sacco has alleged that his wife asked her to do it. The girl, who was being cross-examined by Ms Anna Maria Sacco's defence counsel, said she "didn't get a chance to say everything" in her evidence on Tuesday in the Central Criminal Court.
The girl broke down crying when she was questioned about a lengthy statement she made to gardai on the night of the killing in which she said he had molested her on several occasions and that on one occasion he had "forced himself" on her in his house.
When she was read extracts from the six-page statement containing several allegations of sexual abuse and molestation, the girl denied they were true and broke down in the witness box.
She denied she shot Mr Sacco (29) because he called her into his bedroom and she feared she would be sexually assaulted again.
She had made up that story so that Mr Sacco's wife, Anna Maria, would not get into trouble. She also denied defence suggestions that there were inconsistencies in her account of the killing and that she had given five different accounts of it.
Ms Sacco (21) denies that she murdered her husband at their home in Coolamber Park, Templeogue, on March 20th, 1997.
The prosecution case, which closed yesterday, is that she orchestrated or directed the killing.
In other evidence, the Tallaght barman who had a relationship with Ms Sacco, Mr Peter Gifford, was recalled for cross-examination on his claim that she asked him to get someone to kill her husband.
Mr Gifford agreed with Mr Barry White SC, defending, that he did not have any criminal or subversive connections. Nor was there a notice board in his or any other pub with a note saying, "Unemployed hitman for hire, single contracts carried out".
Mr Peter Charleton SC, prosecuting, asked him was the alleged request for a killer made by way of a joke by Ms Sacco.
Mr Gifford said that at the start he thought it was but as it was said repeatedly, "I just took it that it was kind of getting serious".
Under cross-examination from Mr White, the teenage girl who shot Mr Sacco agreed that in her direct evidence on Tuesday, she indicated that she volunteered to shoot Mr Sacco when she was talking with Ms Sacco in the chip shop the night before.
Yesterday she said: "She asked me and the next day I said I'd do it for her."
"I never got to say everything I wanted to say" on Tuesday, she said.
"I am not putting all the blame on Anna Maria," she continued, adding that she was not putting all the blame on herself either.
"I didn't know what to say when I got up here yesterday."
The girl said she was not telling the truth when she alleged to gardai that Mr Sacco had abused and molested her. "The only reason I told that story was because I didn't want Anna Maria to get into trouble."
But she agreed she went into "great detail" in the statement containing those allegations, which was made over several hours on the night she walked into Rathfarnham Garda station and confessed to shooting Mr Sacco.
The statement alleged that Mr Sacco had been abusing her since October 1996. It alleged that in one incident in the Rathfarnham chip shop he began fondling her breasts at the back of the shop.
Another incident took place two weeks later, and on another occasion, Mr Sacco molested her in his house, where she stayed.
The girl agreed that she said she started wearing her tracksuit in bed because she was afraid he would come in at night.
Her statement then made detailed allegations that on another occasion in the chip shop, Mr Sacco attempted to force sex on her, and had told her to "relax" when she resisted. When he failed to have sexual intercourse with her, he told her she was "a waste of space" and she ran to the toilet and stayed there for some time.
It went on to allege that Mr Sacco had then forced himself on the girl when she was in her bedroom one day. On that occasion, full sexual intercourse was alleged.
The girl told gardai that on the morning she shot him, Mr Sacco called her into his bedroom.
"I knew what he was calling me for," she said in her statement. She felt "I have to stop this," she said. She took his gun out and thought "this will frighten him". When Mr Sacco saw the gun he was laughing. She pulled the trigger but she did not know it was loaded.
In that statement, the girl went on to say that she then wrapped the body in blankets and tried to clean up the scene.
The teenager also agreed with Mr White that she had made similar allegations against Mr Sacco when she was interviewed by a psychiatrist at the Rotunda Hospital Sexual Assault Unit the day after the killing.
But she said: "I was told to say that story, that's why I said it."
Mr White put it to her that she might have given the "graphic account" of abuse to gardai because she was telling the truth and that it was she alone that had killed Mr Sacco.
Crying, the girl replied "No" and turned her head away from the defence counsel.
Asked why she could not remember details of interviews with doctors concerning the allegations, she said: "Because I don't want to remember them."
"This was three years ago," she said, "`I do not want to remember anything, that's why I blocked it all out of my head."
She agreed with Mr White that "within hours" of her pleading guilty to the murder of Mr Sacco in 1998, two gardai met her at Oberstown detention centre and asked if she was willing to give evidence in the trial of Ms Sacco. i she had been smoking heroin on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the killing but said she could not now remember that far back.
She said her statement of Monday, March 24th, 1997 was a true one. In this she alleged Ms Sacco told her: "You are going to do it tonight, you promised me", before making a sign of the cross and telling her she had a chance to kill her husband that night.
The girl said she brought the gun upstairs that night. It was out of case and she wrapped it in jumpers and put it under her bed.
She agreed she gave "an entirely different account" to gardai on March 22nd, when she told them Ms Sacco stood at her bedroom door and had the gun in its case standing against the wall.
Mr White said on four occasions she had made allegations of sexual abuse. He put it to her that she gave five differing accounts of the killing, including three statements to gardai.
"The first two aren't the full truth, the last one is," the girl said. Mr White put it to her: "You and you alone shot Franco and you did not do so at the behest or at the urging of Anna Maria."
"Well, you're wrong," she replied.
The defence case begins today before Mr Justice Patrick Smith.