MARTA HERDA FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER OF CSABA ORSOS IN ARKLOW

had seen him in the water. She said she had to fight for her own life under the water. ‘I would never want to hurt anyone or even to destroy my car,’ she said. CCTV footage showed her driving to the part of Arklow where Mr Orsos lived around 5.30 a.m., and a witness heard the driver having a heated argument on the phone. Call records showed that she rang the deceased three times around that time and a postman found his front door wide open later that morning. Her interviewer put it to her that she had ‘ lured him out of his house’. ‘ This is horrible,’ she responded. ‘Everyone is looking at this story from the last few seconds.’ She said it had been going on for two years. ‘Yes, I was stressed and nervous,’ she said, when asked if the car was going fast. ‘I didn’t want to drive there. It was an accident,’ she said, explaining that they had been arguing in the car. ‘I couldn’t understand what he was saying and then, bang,’ she said. She agreed that he was a nuisance and a pest. She said she had told him she could never be with someone like him because he would lock her somewhere.

Herda had turned away from the jury and wept silently as a video was played of the deceased celebrating his last birthday with her and his family in his home.

His brother could be heard telling her that she was his present. She could be heard replying that she had come to warn the deceased that his manager knew he had lied when he had rung in sick.

In his closing speech, the prosecutor said her car was used ‘as an instrument of murder’.

Her barrister said that it would be suicide if she had driven into the harbour deliberately and that there was evidence that she wasn’t suicidal.

The jury of eight men and four women began deliberating on Monday morning.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy told them that they had three possible verdicts open to them: guilty of murder, acquittal or not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

The jury returned to court at 11.36 a.m. on Thursday morning, having spent eight hours and 11 minutes deliberating.

They had found her guilty of murder by a majority of 11 to one.

Herda showed no emotion