‘Life with the guards was like something surreal’
“It was “like something surreal” and she told Det Fitzgerald several times she wanted no more to do with it, she said.
Ms Farrell also told the court Det Fitzgerald had introduced her to the late Senator Peter Callanan, who told her that her housing difficulties would be sorted. They later got a council house in Schull, she said.
In May 1997, Det Fitzgerald rang her crying, saying he was double- crossed by the down-and-out, “a guy called Graham,” whom he had earlier told her he was sending to Mr Bailey’s house.
Det Fitzgerald told her there was a photo of drugs being handed over to Graham by gardaí, the whole story was going to come out and his career was over, she said. Det Fitzgerald later told her the Garda Press office had got the story “pulled,” she said.
He said he and another Garda approached Graham when they were “wired” and “put the frighteners” on him: he had left the country and, if he came back, he would be found dead in a ditch.
Det Fitzgerald wanted to get Mr Bailey for that, Ms Farrell said. “That was when it started.”
She said she was later asked to make a statement about Mr Bailey’s partner, Jules Thomas, coming into her shop on June 8, 1997, and asking her to come to their home and change the statement she previously made about seeing Mr Bailey about 2am on December 23, 1996.
Ms Farrell said she made that statement, but had “never spoken to Jules Thomas, ever.” It was “all supposed to come to an end” via a plan to get Mr Bailey to come into her shop when she was to get him to “confess everything,” she said.
She said she approached Mr Bailey in a bar in Schull in June 1997 and told him the gardaí were trying to set him up and arranged for him to come to her shop.
When Mr Bailey came into the shop, he told he knew gardaí were trying to fit him up and showed her a poem he had written about that, she said. When she later showed the poem to Det Fitzgerald, he was “livid” and said he was going to get Mr Bailey.
She was giving evidence in Mr Bailey’s continuing civil action against the Garda Commissioner and State, who deny his claims, including wrongful arrest and conspiracy arising from the investigation into the murder of Ms Toscan du Planter.
She had a personal difficulty about saying where she was on December 23, 1996, as her husband did not know she was out with a married male friend, she said.
