Marie Farrell
has said she cannot explain a discrepancy between her evidence in court and all previous statements she made regarding her movements on the night she saw a man at
Kealfadda Bridge
not far from where
Sophie Toscan
du Plantier was murdered.
Ms Farrell (51) told the High Court on Wednesday that she had left her home at Crewe Bay in Schull some time after 10pm on Sunday, December 22nd, 1996, to meet a male friend whom she had met in Cork city, but she told her husband Chris that she was meeting some female friends.
She said she met the man at the East End car park in Schull and travelled with him in his car to Goleen where they parked in the Main Street and chatted for up two hours, and never went to Barleycove before he drove her back to Schull, where she got into her car and returned home.
Return journey
It was on the return journey to Schull that she noticed a man stumbling on the road near Sylvie O’Connell’s knitwear shop near Kealfadda Bridge.
The man was the same man she had seen in Schull on December 21st and December 22nd, but was not Ian Bailey, she told the jury.
During cross-examination, Paul O'Higgins SC put it to Ms Farrell that in a statement which she denied making to gardaí, but signed and dated February 14th, 1997, she said she drove to Goleen where she met the man and that they later drove to Barleycove in his car.
In that statement, Ms Farrell says she then drove back with her friend through Goleen village in his car, but that they turned at Toormore Cross and then returned to Goleen before driving back to Toormore Cross again, which was when she saw the man at about 3.15am.
In that statement, she is then recorded as returning again with her friend to Goleen, chatting for a time in Goleen village before getting into her red Nissan vanette and driving home to Schull, arriving at her house at Crewe Bay at about 4.10am.
Ms Farrell denied ever making that statement and said she simply signed four or six blank pages as she was in a hurry and Det Garda Jim Fitzgerald told her that one of the other gardaí present, Garda Kevin Kelleher, would fill them in later with the necessary detail.
However Mr O'Higgins pointed out to Ms Farrell that in a prepared statement drawn up in consultation with her then solicitor Donal Daly and submitted on February 10th, 2006, to the McAndrew Inquiry into the Garda investigation, she gave a version of events similar to the statement of February 14th, 1997.
Prepared statement
In particular, this prepared statement stated she met her male friend in Goleen, and not Schull, and that they drove later to Barleycove beach where they spent some time before returning to Goleen and then to Toormore Cross before returning to Goleen again.
Mr O'Higgins put it to Ms Farrell that she also told a GSOC (Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission) investigation in 2012 that although she met her friend in Schull, she drove in her own car to Goleen and the first time that she ever denied driving to Goleen was on Tuesday.
Asked to explain these discrepancies, Ms Farrell said: “If it [the prepared statement to McAndrew] says I drove to Goleen first, it is inaccurate, I can only apologise for that.”
She later added: “I’m sorry if I made an error but that’s how I remember it now”.
The case continues.
