A garda inspector told a murder trial jury yesterday that he thought Mr John Diver was "putting on a complete act" when he appeared drunk and incoherent to gardai who went to his home to ask him to identify the body of his wife.
Mr Brendan Grehan, defending, said Mr Diver's state of drunkenness could have been due to his having received £20,000 in redundancy money that day. He accused the inspector of "revisionism" between the first and second statement he wrote.
Mr Diver, a 60-year-old retired hospital clerk, denies the murder of his wife Geraldine, then aged 42, who was found strangled in her car outside Buckley's builders' providers on Robinhood Road, Clondalkin, at around 10:40 p.m. on December 2nd, 1996.
The couple had lived with their two children at Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Co Dublin.
The jury in the Central Criminal Court heard that on November 16th, 1996, Mrs Diver and a man with whom she was having an affair went to Mayo.
Insp Michael Fitzpatrick said he arrived at the Divers' house at about 12:15 a.m. on December 3rd. The house was in darkness. He rang the doorbell twice.
Through glass in the front door he saw Mr Diver's silhouette coming down the stairs, "apparently without any difficulty". But moments later "the man could hardly stand."
He continued: "There was a smell of drink off him. At that stage he started to stagger and appeared to be very drunk." But later, the inspector told Mr Edward Comyn SC, prosecuting, he "did not accept that he could be as drunk as he appeared to be."
He told Mr Grehan that it was only when he went home at around 5 a.m. that "the first thing that struck me was that this man, whom I had apparently woken out of a drunken slumber, firstly, I had apparently woken him just by ringing the doorbell twice; secondly, he came down the stairs without stumbling; and thirdly, he was wearing his dressing gown and slippers, with the gown properly tied, and his hair was neatly combed."
"From conversations I had had in the house, I was aware this man was not a drinking man - he rarely if ever drank - and yet, the night the biggest misfortune, the biggest tragedy that could happen, happened to his family, he appeared very drunk."
Insp Fitzpatrick said: "I had no doubt, my lord, that he was putting it on."
He said he had not been aware that Mr Diver received a £20,000 redundancy payment that day.
Asked why he made no reference to this opinion in his first statement of December 20th, 1996, he said the first account was a statement of fact, and he was later asked "by my authorities" to make a second statement of opinion, which he made on July 28th, 1997.
The driver of a Garda patrol car, Det Garda Maurice Cunningham, told Mr Shane Murphy SC, prosecuting, that while he was with the accused as he got dressed upstairs, he asked him if his wife would normally be working this late.
"He sort of shrugged his shoulders and said she came and went when she pleased," Det Garda Cunningham replied.
He asked the accused if they got on. Mr Diver replied that "she came and went at all hours of the morning and she has her boyfriends."
The hearing continues today before Mr Justice Smith in the Central Criminal Court.