A man acquitted last month of murdering his wife was yesterday found guilty of intimidating a witness in the trial.
John Diver (66), from Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Dublin appeared in Dublin District Court yesterday on charges of intimidating his neighbour, Jean Maher, and of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He was also found guilty of causing criminal damage to Mr Maher's garden shed. The court heard that Mr Diver had fired ball bearings from a catapult at the shed. Two houses separate the Diver and Maher homes.
Det Garda Edward McBride told Mr Justice Hugh O'Donnell that Mr Maher's son, Paul, was "the major witness" in the murder trial.
Geraldine Diver (42) was murdered in December 1996. She was found with a tie around her neck in the front seat of her car outside a builders' providers.
Her husband was convicted of the murder in 2000 but that was overturned by the Supreme Court last year because of breaches of Garda regulations relating to the treatment of people in custody. In the retrial which concluded last month, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty.
Mr Maher's son Paul gave evidence to the trial that he saw Mr Diver in the back seat of the car being driven by his wife, more than one hour before she was found dead.
Yesterday Mr Maher told the court that he was in his garden shed in December 2005 when he heard "large bangs" on the shed.
He ran out of the shed "and I saw the back door of John Diver's house closing".
He installed a close-circuit television (CCTV) camera at the back of his house "for my own safety, for the safety of my children and grandchildren".
On February 2nd and 8th, he again heard loud bangs on the roof and side of the shed. The CCTV footage was replayed in court yesterday and Diver could be seen firing the catapult several times. A rusty ball bearing was found near the shed.
Caroline Biggs, for Mr Diver, said her client accepted that he had used the catapult but said he was trying to scare away cats. His children, Laura and Simon Diver, told the court that the family had a serious problem with stray cats and at least six litters had been born in their overgrown garden.
Laura Diver (22) said her father would not have intimidated Mr Maher as he was "looking forward to proving his innocence" in the upcoming trial.
Simon Diver (19) said he was with his father when he bought the catapult in an army supplies store to scare away the cats and he said his father had "no reason to intimidate Mr Maher".
Det Garda McBride said Mr Diver had suggested that magpies could have taken the ball bearings from his garden and dropped them into Mr Maher's garden.
Ms Biggs told Mr Maher "the reality of this situation is that you and the Divers were not good neighbours by any stretch of the imagination even prior to 1996 [when Ms Diver was killed]".
But Mr Maher said that he had no relationship with the Divers "either way, good or bad. I didn't know them . . . I had no interest in any of them."
Mr Justice O'Donnell said it was "perfectly clear" that Mr Diver was aiming the catapult at Mr Maher and he was "perfectly satisfied" that the catapult was bought to "antagonise a witness in the trial". He sentenced Mr Diver to six months in Mountjoy Prison on the charges of intimidating a witness but backdated it to February 14th, when the defendant had been taken into custody so the sentence is now served.
He also ordered Mr Diver to pay €375 to Mr Maher to pay for repairs to the shed and fined him €750 for criminal damage.
John Diver and his two children made no comment as they left the court yesterday. Mr Maher said he had been fully vindicated by the verdict. "John Diver tried to intimidate us with the sole intent of stopping us giving evidence in a criminal case," he said.
"When John Diver interfered with us, his High Court bail should have been revoked and it was not," he said. "If one of those things [the ball bearings] had hit me on the head I mightn't be here today to give evidence."
