After a murder trial, a rejected appeal, a Supreme Court quashing and a retrial, John Diver was finally acquitted yesterday of murdering his wife in 1996Background
Gardaí investigating the murder of Geraldine Diver have said that the case is now closed.
John Diver was convicted of her murder in 2000, however in July last year, the Supreme Court quashed that decision.
From the very start John Diver had maintained his innocence, and shortly after 1pm at Court No 3 at the Central Criminal Court yesterday a jury of six men and five women found him not guilty of his wife's murder.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, one juror took ill and was taken to hospital. That juror subsequently was discharged on medical grounds.
Over the last three weeks, the Central Criminal Court heard how Ms Diver was found strangled to death in the front seat of her car with a tie, which was attached to a headrest, around her neck.
In 2000 Mr Diver was found guilty and given the mandatory life sentence.
The Court of Criminal Appeal rejected his appeal. However a year ago, the Supreme Court overturned that decision.
It was critical of the grave, obvious and deliberate breaches of Garda regulations on the treatment of people in custody, particularly the failure to record interviews.
The court said that statements made by Mr Diver while in custody were inadmissible and should not have been included in the original trial.
Mr Diver also made a series of denials to gardaí when he was in custody, which were omitted during the first trial.
The Supreme Court said there was also a conflict of evidence in relation to statements made by the Diver children in relation to their father's movements on the night of his wife's murder and the evidence of Paul Maher.
During the 2000 trial the children gave evidence about the times of their father's movements on the night.
The prosecution contended that statements they made in 1996 were a more credible account of their father's movements, but at the trial they said those statements were not correct.
The Diver children Simon (19) and Laura (23) sat beside their father throughout this retrial, and did not give any evidence.
Geraldine Diver was an only child, who after 18 years of marriage and two children embarked on an affair with a then 28- year-old supermarket employee, Ray Roche.
That affair began the September before she died, but the court heard that she was in love with her "wonderful Ray," and that they had made plans for a future together.
She was going to leave her husband, move in with Ray Roche and she had hoped to have a child with him.
When they were alive, her parents lived across the road from her home. Geraldine's mother died in 1995, while her father, Liam Grimes, died following the first trial.