Ms Anna Maria Sacco asked a man she had an affair with to get someone to kill her husband, the man alleged yesterday.
A murder trial jury also heard that the day after he was shot dead, Ms Sacco told gardai her husband had punched and kicked her since their relationship started when she was 13 and he was 21.
After eight days of legal argument, the jury returned to the Central Criminal Court to hear further prosecution evidence in the trial of Ms Sacco (22), of Ravensdale Park, Kimmage, Dublin, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, Franco Sacco (29) at their home in Coolamber Park, Templeogue, Dublin, on March 20th, 1997.
Mr Peter Gifford, a barman from Kilclare Avenue, Tallaght, told Mr Peter Charleton SC, prosecuting, he met Ms Sacco at a night-club in November 1995. They were introduced by a friend who did fast-food deliveries for Luigi's chip shop in Rathfarnham village, which Anna Maria and Franco Sacco ran.
The defence team, led by Mr Barry White SC, contests Mr Gifford's evidence, and the jury was told he will be cross-examined on it today.
In his evidence, Mr Gifford said that some time after they met, a relationship developed between himself and Ms Sacco. They became sexually "intimate". She began telling him about the beatings, he said. "There was one instance she said he beat her with a baseball bat." He alleged: "I was asked would I be able to get anybody to kill Franco".
Mr Gifford said he did not think it was serious and so said Yes. She asked him about eight times, but he did not know anybody who would do such a thing, he told the court.
Their relationship "kind of ended", but in the summer of 1996 they got together again for two to three months before it ended by mutual agreement.
Some time at Christmas 1996, possibly Christmas night, Anna Maria and the girl who, he told the court, eventually shot Mr Sacco came to his father's house and they exchanged gifts. Anna Maria left a pair of gloves there and the witness said he kept meaning to bring them down to her.
He brought them to her at the chip shop the night before Franco Sacco was killed, he told the jury.
The following morning at around 11 the defendant called to his door and told him the teenage girl, who was crying, was "after shooting Franco". Anna Maria Sacco then asked him could he help get rid of the body of Franco. He told her he would, but was only saying that to get them out of his father's house.
He promised he would phone her but he never did, he said. However, when he was back at his father's house at around four o'clock later that day, he got a message and phoned her because of that.
When he rang, there was a power problem with her mobile so he rang her again at 4.30, he said. "When I got through, she asked did I get anybody to help. I said No," he said.
He said he later asked a friend to ring her on his behalf. He drove with the friend to Poulaphouca in Wicklow and rang her twice from a pub there. He dialled the number while his friend held the receiver. On the second phone call, he heard his companion saying that this was "a friend of a friend" and that it was too late to do anything.
They rang again from a pub in Blessington and his friend told her she was "better off going to the police", he said.
Earlier, in other evidence, Det Sgt James Costello told Mr Charleton that he went to the home of the defendant's parents, Luigi and Lorna Sacco, at Ravensdale Park, Kimmage, on March 21st, 1997. There he collected Anna Maria, who agreed to come to Tallaght Garda station to make a witness statement.
In this statement, which her mother witnessed but which Anna Maria did not sign, she said that when she started going out with Franco Sacco first, she was 13 and he was 21.
From when she was about 16, Franco "started laying down the rules", the statement continued. "And if I didn't obey them, I got an odd punch or a kick to my legs".
This went on until a week before their marriage, she said. The marriage date was set for her 19th birthday and a week before it she ran away to Scotland with a friend. "I wanted to give him a fright and get him to stop hitting me," she told gardai. But after a while he began hitting her again.
Insp Gerard O'Carroll, who at the time of the investigation was a detective sergeant, told the court he arrested Anna Maria Sacco two days later at her parents' house in Kimmage.
Anna Maria Sacco was arrested for the unlawful possession of firearms at Coolamber Park on March 20th under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. The specific offence he had in mind was the possession of firearms with intent to endanger life, Insp O'Carroll told the court.
Her parents and sister were arrested. Anna Maria was taken to Sundrive Road station.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Smith and a jury.