Witness had flashbacks after murder, trial hears

Mr Campion (aged 24) of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, Limerick, John (aged 27) and Desmond (aged 23) Dundon both from Ballinacurra Weston, Co. Limerick and Clare business man Anthony Kelly (aged 50) with an address at Killrush all plead not guilty to murdering Mr Fitzgerald, on November 29th 2002 at Brookhaven Walk, Mill Road, Corbally, Limerick.

Cahill (aged 33) said he had been afraid of being killed by the officers or by "politicals". "I was in the cell in Portlaoise and they were talking above me. They were saying the murder victim didn't get a chance."

Cahill said he was hearing screaming and voices in his head and they only went away when he told the truth about the things he had done in his life.

He said the voices started when he was in solitary confinement while serving a five-year sentence for being in possession with a machine gun which he claimed was to be used in a murder in Dublin in 2003 for which he was paid €50,000.

He said the voices sounded like someone talking to him outside his head. "I was coming down the stairs in Portlaoise and I was getting some heroin off the lads and the voices were saying 'he's on camera'."

He said the voices referred to him as a paedophile and a supergrass and sometimes seemed to be coming out of the television, answering him back and asking him questions.

He started seeing a psychologist in 2005.

"I was afraid of seeing the psychologist because I was still getting the screaming. Stuff I had done when I was younger, abuse and stuff."

Cahill said: "I was getting flashbacks. I could see the murder in pictures."

He agreed with Mr Devally that he had told the psychologist he often talked to himself.

He said he was very concerned to get the evidence right but got mixed up with another murder that had been planned. "I was getting everything jumbled up with the screaming and everything."

During this period he wrote a 90-day "diary" covering 1997 to 2003 detailing a wide range of criminal activity carried out by both himself and others.

He agreed with Mr Devally that he had named around 100 other people involved in crimes including drug trafficking, murder, arms offences and a trip to Germany to buy radio controlled car bombs. However he said that some of this was what the voices had told him to write.

In May 2005, he asked to speak to gardaí investigating Brian Fitzgerald's murder and in November of that year started making a detailed series of statements.

He said repeatedly that he was afraid the officers were going to kill him and on one occasion threw boiling water on a prison guard because he thought he was going to attack him.

He told Mr Roger Sweetman SC, defending Desmond Dundon, that in September 2005 he made a statement to gardaí that Paddy "Dutchy" Holland and John Gilligan wanted his book of evidence to give to people in Limerick.

He said that he had told gardaí he had found a gun in Mr Fitzgerald's jeep because of the screaming, and it wasn't true.

He also said he could not be 100% certain who asked him to carry out the shooting or who was to pay him €10,000.

He said no one told him to shoot Mr Fitzgerald in the head and he could hear a voice saying "give him one in the head."

He said he had never shot a gun before, although he had fired a shotgun and a blank pistol in robberies.

He told Mr Sweetman that when he was taken to Dublin with Mr A and Mr B to meet the man originally supposed to drive the motorcycle, Mr A wanted to drive some men up to the Dublin mountains so that he and Cahill could shoot them to get a jeep.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Peter Charleton and the jury of twelve men at the Central Criminal Court sitting at Cloverhill.