GARDAI found two mobile panic alarm units in the bedroom where murder accused Mrs Catherine Nevin has said her husband's killer came to tie her up, a jury heard yesterday.
On Wednesday, the jury heard one remote alarm unit was found in the bedroom. Yesterday, a witness from the Garda Technical Bureau said he found a second one.
The evidence was heard after legal argument delayed the start of the fifth day of the trial of Mrs Nevin (48) at the Central Criminal Court.
She has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, Mr Thomas (Tom) Nevin (54), on March 19th, 1996, in their home at Jack White's Inn, Ballinapark, near Brittas Bay in Co Wicklow and has denied charges of soliciting Mr John Jones in 1989, Mr Gerry Heapes in 1990 and Mr William McClean at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, also in 1990, to murder her husband.
The jury has heard Mrs Nevin was found by gardai bound and gagged behind the front door of her house. She had pressed a stationary panic button sited 31/2 feet above ground level on the door frame at 4.31 a.m. on the day of the killing. She told gardai a man wearing a "woolly mask" came into her bedroom with a knife.
Det Garda William Brennan, from the ballistics section of the Garda Technical Bureau, told Mr Tom O'Connell, prosecuting, that when he searched Mrs Nevin's bedroom on March 20th, 1996, he found a remote control transmitter for a panic attack alarm in the drawer of a small octagonal table close to her bed.
Behind the closed curtain on a window sill directly behind the headboard of the bed, he found an identical mobile panic alarm.
Det Garda Brennan said he examined both devices and found they were working and could be activated whether the general alarm system in the house was on or off.
The garda said a box of 25 shotgun cartridges of 12 gauge also found on the window sill were of a size normally used for clay pigeon shooting and were "nothing at all to do with the shot used in the killing". A 12 gauge single-barrel shotgun found in a storeroom off the kitchen was Mr Nevin's own licensed firearm.
He told the court that on the day of the killing, March 19th, he found no evidence of ransacking in the downstairs area of the premises or in any of the upstairs rooms except for Mrs Nevin's bedroom.
With the consent of Mrs Nevin, he took swabs of her hands and face for forensic testing for firearms residue.
The jury also heard the shotgun cartridge used in the killing of Mr Nevin was never found.
Det Garda Brennan said that when he examined Mr Nevin's body at the scene he found "propellant powder tattooing" on the clothing around the gunshot wound. Normally these gunpowder burn marks were found "well within the two-metre or two-yard range", he said.
"I estimate that the shot would have been discharged from within one to four yards," he told counsel.
The trial continues before Miss Justice Carroll and the jury.