A neighbour told a murder trial jury she was told by the accused man's young son that his Daddy had hit his Mammy and kicked her and that she was "asleep in the garage".
In a statement to gardai, the accused, whose wife's body was found beside a builder's skip in Glasnevin in 1996, admitted he had had a gambling problem in the past and he and his wife had sometimes rowed about money.
Mr David Murphy (36), of Munster Street, Phibsboro, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife, Patricia Murphy (33), between May 27th and May 28th, 1996, within the State. The couple lived with their four children in Griffith Avenue.
Ms Carol Swan, a neighbour, told Mr Brendan Grogan SC, defending, that on June 6th, 1996, she spoke to the three-year-old son. She recalled saying to the child that she had heard him calling for his mother in the back garden. She has previously given evidence that this was on May 27th, the day before Mrs Murphy's body was found. Ms Swan said she heard the child between 12.05 p.m. and 12.15 p.m. When she was with David on June 6th she asked him why his Mammy had not let him in that day, she told the court. He said: "She was asleep in the garage." Then he said: "Daddy hit Mammy and Mammy fell asleep."
She had gone with the child into the garage. Later, in the garage, the child said "it was in the garden" that it had happened. There was "talk of a hammer", she said. The child had demonstrated with his right hand a fist-like motion. He said his Mammy fell asleep and "then Daddy kicked her".
She asked him if he had tried to wake her up and he said he had said to his mother: "Give Daddy back his money." He had not woken her, however.
Ms Swan told Mr Grogan she had directly asked the child if Daddy had hit Mammy with the hammer and he had replied "he had a hammer in his fist", but she took it to mean the child had the hammer. He had answered "No" when asked if Daddy had hit Mammy with the hammer, she agreed. She agreed with Mr Grogan that the time she heard the child's call on May 27th was "a few minutes either side" of midday.
The child had been telling her about events immediately before that, she said. She believed that "if you follow it chronologically", she did not think his mother was asleep in the garage.
She had got that response to the question as to why his Mammy had not opened the door to him. She agreed with Mr Grogan that the child then "goes back to say she was asleep in the garage, Daddy hit her, and kicked her" and that she fell asleep.
In a late sitting in court yesterday, the jury heard that in a statement on May 28th, 1996, at Whitehall Garda station, Mr Murphy told gardai he had met his wife, Patricia Behan, within two months of moving to Co Clare.
In December 1986 she became pregnant but later had a miscarriage. By then they were living together in a flat and she was still working at a hotel in Kilrush. About eight months after they met they married. They got a council house in Wilson Road from Kilrush Urban District Council and later bought the house. They lived there until September 1994, when they moved to Dublin.
Patricia "was always talking about going home", her husband told gardai. She applied for a house in Kilrush two to three months before her death. "I did not want to go back to Clare but I suppose in the long run, to keep the family together, I would have," he said. The prosecution case continues today in the Central Criminal Court.