A social welfare office manager who battered his wife to death later laughed as he told the dead woman's sister that he had been arrested, it was alleged at the Central Criminal Court.
Ms Angela Cleere said that Patrick Hennessy lied to her and told her that he had been arrested because he was first on the scene after his wife, Marie, had been beaten with a car jack. He also laughed and seemed puzzled that his in-laws were crying at the news that Marie had been very seriously injured.
Ms Cleere broke down in the witness box as she recalled that Hennessy later confessed to her in a Garda station. She said he told her he had had a row with Marie and had hit her with the car jack.
Ms Cleere said she was very upset and ran to a nearby toilet. She later returned to the room and shouted at Hennessy that her sister was probably going to die.
She said he replied: "What about me? I'm left without a wife or a mother for my three children."
Cross-examined by Ms Maureen Clark SC, defending, Ms Cleere agreed that Patrick and Marie Hennessy appeared to have had a very happy marriage.
The jury has heard that Hennessy killed his wife with a car jack three days after he was suspended from his job following an internal investigation by the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. He later confessed to gardai that he had attacked his wife after she shouted at him for losing his job.
Hennessy has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murdering Mrs Marie Hennessy on May 12th, 1999, two days after the attack.
Ms Cleere's fiance, Mr John Guiry, told the court that in a room at the Garda station Hennessy told him that he had attacked Marie after she had taken a bar from the boot of her car and swung it at him. He said he took the bar from her and "f...ing pulverised her" with it.
Mr Justice Finnegan told the jury that the accused would be giving evidence next Monday.