The trial of 48-year-old Catherine Nevin, accused of murdering her husband Tom at a County Wicklow public house, has opened before a jury of six men and six women in the Central Criminal Court. Tom Nevin was shot dead in 1996. The killers escaped with the pub's takings. Catherine Nevin denies the murder charge and three further charges of soliciting three named men to murder him in 1989 and 1990. The prosecution case is that she hired someone to kill him.
55-year-old Tom Nevin was said to be a quiet and deeply inoffensive man. Married to his wife Catherine for 20 years they ran a successful public House, Jack White's Inn near Brittas Bay, in County Wicklow. But the marriage had become a business arrangement, according to prosecuting counsel Peter Charlton. He told the jury that the couple had separate bedrooms and Catherine Nevin, with her husband's knowledge shared her affections with others. She bore him ill-will, he said.
Tom Nevin was shot in the heart sometime in the early hours of March 19 1996. He was counting the takings from the weekend's business. There was no sign of a struggle and the killers escaped with the takings, which Mrs Nevin said were over £16,000.
The prosecution is not saying that Catherine Nevin physically took the gun and killed her husband, but that she contracted another to carry out the killing. The actual killer has never been arrested or charged, there is no murder weapon and an absence of forensic evidence. The prosecution case is built on circumstantial evidence. They claim that in 1989 and 1990 she solicited three named men to murder her husband and his eventual death happened in accordance with plans she had outlined in the past. Mrs Nevin denies the four charges against her.
