Pat told Mary he sold her passport before laughing in her face

MARY, dressed in a purple satin shift dress and towering wedge heels, is pictured in Spain at the wedding of her niece Louise in September 2012.

The widow had decided to fly out a week early and enjoy some time in the sun with her three sons before the nuptials.

The night before the flight from Dublin, an anniversary Mass for Martin, who was now five years dead, was planned at the house in Fawnagowan.

On the day of the Mass, Mary laid out all the passports and the boarding passes on the kitchen table because she knew they would be rushing out of the door to the airport and she didn’t want to forget anything.

As the boys were packing their suitcases and getting everything ready to go, they noticed one of the passports was missing.

Mary, she would later say, was ‘fit to kill them’, until she realised the missing one was hers.

They tore the house apart before the Mass, but there was no sign of the passport. The boys refused to leave on the flight with their aunt, so Mary had to change all of their tickets and apply for an emergency passport. They finally set off for their holiday a few days later.

Mary believed Pat had taken her passport, but she couldn’t prove it.

Soon after she had returned from Spain, Pat confronted her about a ladder he had on the farm that had been moved. He told her not to move his property without his permission.

‘Where is my passport? she furiously asked him. He told her he had sold it and laughed in her face.