Murder trial hears from victim's lover

The trial of man accused of killing his wife 10 years ago has heard from the man with whom she was having an affair that they were planning to move in with each other and have a child.

On the eighth day of the trial of John Diver, Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Dublin, who denies murdering his wife, Geraldine, at Robinhood Road, Clondalkin, on December 2, 1996, Raymond Roche said that he and Mrs Diver got on very well with each other, and within a short period of time started making plans for a future together.

Mrs Diver, who worked at the Coombe Women’s Hospital, was found with a tie around her neck in the front seat of her car outside a builder’s providers at around 10.40pm on December 2.

At the Central Criminal Court today, Raymond Roche said that Geraldine Diver was a regular customer at the supermarket where he worked.

In response to a question from prosecution counsel, Mr Edward Comyn SC, described their relationship as “smooth”.

Geraldine was “very easy going”, and got on well with his family and friends.

Roche said that Geraldine approached him after he returned from a holiday and told him that she tought he had been transferred to another store.

She also told him she had been going to the other store to see if he was there.

On the night of her birthday, in September 1996, she turned up in the pub where he usually drank, and afterwards she gave him a lift home.

That night she asked him if he would like to “date her”.

The relationship developed from there and became sexual.

They went away together, and in late November 1996 spent a weekend at a B&B in the west of Ireland.

Roche said that Geraldine told him that she was separated, was sleeping downstairs at her home, and had two children.

Roche, who was in his late 20s at the time, knew she was old older, but thought that she was in her mid to late 30s.

Roche told the court that he never met John Diver, but did meet her two children.

Initially they used condoms but in the weeks before her death they stopped using them.

Geraldine, he said, wanted a baby with him before “it was too late for her”.

Roche said that after spending the night with him Geraldine left the house he was renting in the early hours of the morning of December 2.

They had no arrangement to meet up later that day, but Roche said that he would “give her a buzz”.

He telephoned her at work but was unable to speak to her.

Under cross-examination, from counsel for the accused Mr Brendan Grehan SC, Roche agreed that Geraldine “made all the running in the relationship, and was making plans for them” but that “he did not mind because everything was going so well”.

He said that he was at his local pub the night Geraldine was found dead, watching a soccer match with some friends and relatives.

The game involved his favourite team, Liverpool.

It finished around 10pm. He left the pub after 11pm and stayed the night at his mother’s house after walking his sister home.

Roche also admitted that in a statement he made to the gardaí in the days after Geraldine died that he was wearing dark clothing and a bomber jacket that night.

Roche added that Geraldine Diver, a non-smoker, hated it when he lit up.

He stated that he never smoked the brand of cigarettes that were found in a jacket that belonged to her.

Butts of that brand were found in the ashtray of her car.

Two condoms were also found in that cigarette packet.

According to Roche they were different to the ones they had used when the relationship first started.

He also denied that they had a bust-up when he went out with his friends.

She had, he told the court, put on “a sulky face” after he spent some time away from her while they were at a nightclub, and “had missed their song”.

The court also heard from Libby Henderson, who worked at the Coombe Hospital. She said that a around 7pm that night she answered a phone call for the admissions department from a person speaking with a put-on Pakistani accent.

She said that the person was John Diver, as this was something that he often did.

Under cross-examination from Mr Grehan she admitted that at the time she and the accused were not on good terms, but she was certain that he was the caller at the time that she answered the call.

The trial, which is being heard by Mr Justice Philip O’Sullivan, is now in its second week.

It will resume on Monday.