A court has heard that heard a Latvian woman, on trial for impeding a murder investigation, was in a controlling relationship at the time of the alleged offence.
Egita Juanmaize (aged 34), of no fixed address, denies simulating her housemate’s suicide in Kilnaleck, Cavan in June 2014.
Ms Juanmaize is on trial accused of simulating her housemate’s suicide by placing a blue rope around her neck after a man had killed her.
This man – a Latvian and the accused’s former partner - has not been charged as he is in a nursing home after suffering a traumatic brain injury during a separate hijacking incident.
A forensic psychiatrist told the court he believed this former partner was a dominant and threatening man who had control over the accused during their relationship.
Egita told him her former partner had nazi and racist views and had a swastika tattooed on his chest.
The psychiatrist believes Egita has post-traumatic stress from a crime she said she suffered when she was 12 years old and also from seeing her housemate being killed.
The psychiatrist said Egita told him her former boyfriend had strangled her housemate to death that night and she had to make it look like a suicide as she was afraid he would kill her, too.