A man accused of killing his wife 10 years ago has been found not guilty of her murder. John Diver (65), a retired porter at the Coombe Women's Hospital, of Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Dublin, was acquitted at the Central Criminal Court yesterday of murdering his wife Geraldine (42), at Robinhood Road, Clondalkin, on December 2nd, 1996.
Ms Diver, a mother of two children who also worked at the Coombe Women's Hospital, was found with a tie around her neck in the front seat of her car outside a builders providers at 10.40pm.
In 2000, Mr Diver, her husband of 18 years, was convicted of her murder, but that conviction was overturned last year, following a decision by the Supreme Court.
The jury of six men and five women returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty yesterday.
It started its deliberations on Tuesday afternoon, but spent the night in a hotel after failing to reach a verdict. On the 10th day of what was a retrial, its decision was delivered to the court shortly before lunchtime yesterday. The jurors had been deliberating for just over 3½ hours.
Mr Diver said "thank you" when the decision was read out. The two Diver children, Laura (23) and Simon (19), sat beside their father during yesterday's proceedings. All shed tears and embraced following the not-guilty verdict.
The retrial before Mr Justice Philip O'Sullivan came after the Supreme Court quashed Mr Diver's previous conviction of murdering his wife, because gardaí had failed to comply with the rules and regulations governing the treatment of people in custody.
Following yesterday's verdict, one of the senior gardaí involved in what was a lengthy investigation, Insp Michael Fitzpatrick, said that the case was now closed and that nobody else was being sought in relation to the death of Ms Diver.
Neither Simon nor Laura Diver, nor their uncle Edward Diver, had any comment to make.
A number of friends and colleagues of Ms Diver, who attended the bulk of this retrial, left the court shortly after the verdict was read out.
In early December 1996, Ms Diver was found strangled in her car. An autopsy carried out by the former State Pathologist Prof John Harbison said that she had died as a result of asphyxia due to strangulation by ligature. However given the nature of her injuries, manual strangulation could not be ruled out.
The court heard evidence from the security guard who found her body and from a truck driver who had passed by the car and who had noticed a pair of hands of someone sitting in the seat behind Ms Diver.
Her clothing had been pulled up and her breasts were exposed.
Evidence was also given by a neighbour of the Divers, Paul Maher. He told the court that he saw Mr Diver in the back seat of the car being driven by his wife, close to the street where they lived, on the night she was found dead. He estimated that he saw this at about 9.25pm.
Another witness, Mark Sharkey, who was with Mr Maher at the time, said that he thought the car passed them at 9.35pm, but could not identify who was in the back of the Divers' car.
Video evidence showed Ms Diver leaving her place of work at about 9.26pm that night.
Her home was approximately a nine-minute drive from the hospital. The builder's yard is located a three-minute drive from her home.
CCTV pictures showed her car stopped outside the gate of Buckley's builders providers at 9.40pm that night.
Evidence was given that she had been having an affair with a man 14 years her junior, Ray Roche, with whom the court heard she "was besotted".
Before her death, the court heard that she was planning to leave her husband and have a baby with Mr Roche.