John Gilligan gazed up at the skylight in the Special Criminal Court as Mr Justice Diarmuid O'Donovan sentenced him to 28 years in jail.
Standing with his hands clasped, he had appeared equally unmoved moments earlier when accused of causing an "avalanche of misery". Nor did he react when the judge spoke of his "insatiable greed".
Sentence passed, Gilligan resumed his seat with his feet up on a ledge in front.
It was the 15th, 16th, or 17th conviction - there was conflict on this point - of his criminal career. Which may explain why he did not join in the collective intake of breath in the packed courtroom at the announcement of his sentence for drug offences, and why he betrayed no emotion.
Wearing a light blue shirt, blue-grey trousers and white runners, Gilligan stared straight ahead throughout, except at key moments. Then, as when the judge quoted his threats - corroborated by two witnesses - to kill Veronica Guerin and sexually abuse her son, his eyes wandered towards the skylight.
Inscrutable as he was, he can only have been encouraged when, mid-way through the judgment, Mr Justice O'Donovan declared the court's view that the only evidence which could possibly implicate Gilligan in Ms Guerin's murder "was that of Russell Warren".
Warren's character references had not been good. He was, the judge said, "a self-confessed perjurer, a proven self-serving liar," a person who "did not care who he hurt if by doing so there was some benefit to himself".
He had implicated his parents in criminal activity, "had cheated on his wife and his best friend" and "exploited his younger sister". Moreover, his evidence had been "riddled with inconsistencies".
At the end of the 90-minute ruling, the judge spoke of the court's "grave suspicions" that Gilligan was complicit in the Guerin murder, but the case had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Some gardai in the packed courtroom looked crestfallen. Gilligan did not react at all, except to gaze at the skylight.
