Witnesses
Marie Farrell
, a shopkeeper in Schull, Saffron Thomas, daughter of Mr Bailey’s partner,
Jules Thomas
,
Claire Wilkinson
, an actor, scriptwriter and friend of Mr
Bailey
Marie Farrell walked out of court on Thursday after refusing, despite repeated questions from State counsel Paul O’Higgins, to name a male friend whom she was with, unknown to her husband, on the night of December 22nd/23rd, 1996, near Schull.
Her departure from court came after Mr Justice John Hedigan said this was one of the most serious cases to be heard for years and she must answer the question and name the man.
Ms Farrell stood up, picked up her coat and bag, and said: “I’m going, I’m having nothing more to do with it.”
She resumed her evidence later in the day.
Ms Farrell said she was confusing fact and fiction during a 2012 GSOC interview in which she gave details of Ian Bailey coming in to her shop in Schull in June 1997and presenting her with details of her former address in London and where her husband, Chris had his business.
Ms Farrell denied that she was telling “bare-faced lies” to the jury when she told them Bailey had never confronted her with any details of her life in London. “The evidence I gave here is the truth . . . I don’t know how I got mixed there [in the GSOC interview],” she said. English actress Claire Wilkinson said that when she was interviewed by members of the McAndrew inquiry team in Cork in January 2006 and they took a statement from her, they failed to mention her reaction to comments they made about framing a suspect.
Cross-examined by counsel for the State, Luán Ó Braonáin SC, Ms Wilkinson said she had only seen the statement taken by the two officers in 2006 in recent weeks when Mr Bailey posted it to her and it reflected what she said to them, save for the exchange between them about framing a suspect.
“I said it was a very sad reflection on human beings to try and frame somebody when they hadn’t been proven guilty of anything to save your job or your family and their reply was, ‘If you thought somebody had done something, didn’t you think it was alright to do that?’ and I said, ‘No’.”
Mr Ó Braonáin said it was “so preposterous as to be incredible” to suggest that two officers charged with investigating a complaint of Garda corruption and the alleged framing of Mr Bailey by gardaí would tell a friend of Mr Bailey’s that they believed it was acceptable to frame a suspect.
Ms Wilkinson said she expected it would be denied by the two officers in question but that was what she had said to them as she had been brought up to believe a person was innocent until they were proven guilty and that was their reply.
Saffron Thomas said she and her sisters, her mother and Bailey had led a happy existence in Schull prior to the arrests, frequently attending music sessions. “Life was fairly fun . . . everybody was fairly happy, yeah,” but that all changed with the two arrests, she said.
“Everything changed – my mum hasn’t slept properly since this happened, which is bound to be detrimental for anyone – the ostracisation in the community was unbelievable . . . you couldn’t go anywhere without being looked at or pointed out or being paranoid – it just cut out any social life.
“I would have talked to her the next day and probably every day for two or three years afterwards because she was devastated . . . She talked to me every day and most of the time she cried – every day for the first two years – I was just trying to make sure she was okay.
“Ian Bailey used to be very outgoing and gregarious but he’s become very introverted because he has been judged by everyone . . . the dogs in the street had been judging him ever since, it’s been absolutely horrendous,” she told Mr Bailey’s barrister Jim Duggan in direct evidence.