A self-confessed former IRA man told a jury yesterday that when Mrs Catherine Nevin came to him with suggestions of how he might shoot her husband he tried to fob her off, but each time she came back with a fresh idea.
Mr Gerry Heapes, who admitted he was a member of an IRA active service unit from 1976 until his conviction for an armed robbery of a cash-and-carry store in 1977, said he was approached by her about shooting her husband 10 times.
He "put a block on it" each time she made another suggestion, and felt she eventually "got the message" that he wasn't going to do anything.
In the Central Criminal Court trial, Mrs Catherine Nevin (48) has pleaded not guilty to murdering her husband, Mr Tom Nevin (54), on March 19th 1996 in their home at Jack White's Inn near Brittas Bay in Co Wicklow.
She has also pleaded not guilty to soliciting Mr John Jones in 1989, or soliciting Mr Gerry Heapes or Mr William McClean in 1990 to murder her husband.
Mr Heapes has alleged that Mrs Nevin said "she wanted me to kill Tom or could I get someone to kill him". He said the IRA was never mentioned in her proposition to him.
The jury has also heard from a former Sinn Fein member, Mr John Jones, who said Mrs Nevin separately asked him "to get the IRA to shoot Tom".
Mr Heapes yesterday told the court he went on hearing Mrs Nevin's propositions because he was "curious" and "intrigued" by the whole thing. He found her approach to him "ludicrous", he said.
Giving evidence for the prosecution, Mr Heapes said Mrs Nevin first suggested he could shoot Tom during her husband's weekly visit to flats he owned on South Circular Road, when he would have the pub takings with him before lodging them in a bank in Blanchardstown.
When he "knocked that on the head", she next suggested he could kill Tom as he drove through Phoenix Park.
"It was 10 or 12 times" he met her, he said, over two to three months, "because every time I knocked back an idea she'd come up with another one".
He said at one meeting, "she wanted it done" after the following St Patrick's weekend. He told her he wouldn't have time to arrange it. She next suggested the August bank holiday weekend.
He alleged she told him that "Tom would always leave it to the last minute to go to the bank" and if he was late by a minute, he would go to Clonee, Co Meath to get meat for the pub, stopping at the Grasshopper Inn for lunch.
Mr Heapes said she drove to the Grasshopper with him, and suggested he shoot Tom there, take the keys off him, and take the money from the boot of the car.
"Then she came up with another idea," he said, that she would make sure he missed the bank and the two of them would go in for dinner in the Grasshopper. When they'd come out, she would be behind Tom, and Mr Heapes was then to shoot him.
He told her he couldn't do that because the bulk of the shot would pass through her husband and hit her. "But it would look great," she said, "if Tom was to die in my arms."
Asked what his reaction to this was, Mr Heapes replied: "I thought it was sick, I thought it was a sick proposal."
Asked if he had ever told anyone about the alleged soliciting, Mr Heapes told counsel he didn't at first, but later "was telling a couple of lads in the pool hall".
"I was just telling them this lunatic was looking to bump off her husband", he said.
Their names were "Redser, Macker, and there was a couple of others, I just can't remember them offhand," he said. Everyone has a nickname in a pool hall, he told counsel.
Mr Heapes denied he had spoken to anyone else. He said the only people he spoke to were those in the pool hall, and they had laughed about it and told him that if he heard more, to come back and tell them. "When you think about it", he said, a woman that keeps on coming back - it was so ludicrous . . .".
Mr MacEntee put it to him that his statement gave the "distinct impression" that he was "reporting back to people of substance" and not "Redser and Mixer", as Mr MacEntee put it. The witness said that was what counsel was reading into it, and he wasn't sure whether "reporting back" were his words or words of the gardai.
He agreed his statement said: "When I reported back again, from the impression I got then, knowing how serious the matter was, I thought action would be taken to stop the matter, either by telling Tom or calling Catherine in."
He said he was willing to take a lie detector test to prove that everything he said in court was the truth, "Is your client willing to that, Mr MacEntee", he asked.
Mr Heapes said he last saw Mrs Nevin in 1994 or 1995. On a date he couldn't remember he came to Jack White's Inn with a fellow doorman, to ask Tom Nevin if he had a bedsit to let.
"A couple of years after again" he returned to the pub with the same man, who like him, worked as a doorman. Their purpose, he said, was to "see what the story was" and to con Catherine Nevin out of money over her proposition to shoot Tom. They believed they would get money off her "because she wouldn't be able to go to the police".
The jury heard that when they arrived at the pub, Mrs Nevin came straight over to the two men and intimated that she had "patched things up" with Tom.
The two had planned the fraud in a pub, Mr Heapes said. Mr MacEntee asked: "Was there some money to be got on the first expedition?"
"No," the witness replied. He denied that the second visit was to collect money, as Mr MacEntee alleged. "No, not to collect, to try to con her out of it," he told the court. "Have you ever collected money from pubs or businesses that you protected?" counsel continued. "No", Mr Heapes said.
The case continues at the Central Criminal Court today.