A 56-year-old woman has admitted that she killed her husband by hitting him on the head with a hammer while he slept.
Anne Burke, from Ballybrittas in Co Laois, denies the murder of Patrick Burke on 19 August 2007.
She claims she was suffering from a mental disorder at the time, which diminished her responsibility for the killing.
She told gardaí she did it because ‘she couldn't stand the abuse any more’.
After she had killed her husband, she wrote suicide notes to her children and cut her wrists.
However, she was found by her youngest son who then found his father's body. Mrs Burke told gardaí afterwards she wanted to die.
She said ‘I killed my husband. I'm a murderer. Send me where they put people who do that.’
Mrs Burke had left a psychiatric hospital five days earlier where she had been since an earlier attempt to cut her wrists.
She told gardaí her husband told her if she did not come home he would leave her.
He left her without the bus fare to come home and she said he later called her a 'fat pig' and said he was ashamed that she had been in a ‘mental hospital’.
She said she knew her head ‘wasn't right’ when she left the hospital.
The court heard Patrick Burke had gone out on the night before he was killed.
He rang his wife in the early hours of Sunday morning to tell her he'd been speaking to a woman.
He returned home at 4.45am and there was a prolonged row between the couple.
The court heard that later that afternoon, while he was sleeping, Mr Burke was struck on the head around 23 times with a hammer.
In an interview with gardaí after she was arrested, Mrs Burke said she had been abused and ‘clattered’ since they married in 1975.
She said she was ‘murdered’ on their wedding night.
She said her husband told her he could 'get anything done to anyone' and that she would be found in the Dublin Mountains.
When he would come home from the pub, he would 'show her how he would break her neck'.
Both drank regularly and excessively the jury members were told. They had four children who were aged between 17 and 29 at the time of Mr Burke's death.
The jury of eight men and four women must decided if Mrs Burke was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the killing and if it was sufficient to diminish her responsibility.
They are likely to hear medical evidence tomorrow.
