THE former personal assistant of U2 star Adam Clayton was "still maintaining her innocence" after a jury found her guilty of stealing €2.8m from the rock star's personal bank accounts.
Carol Hawkins (47), from Lower Rathmines Road in Dublin, was convicted on all 181 counts of theft, with unanimous verdicts by the jury at the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin on each count yesterday. She will be sentenced on July 6.
The evidence in the case had been "overwhelming", Judge Patrick McCartan told the jury after they had returned their verdicts following five hours and three minutes of deliberations. "Nobody could seriously disagree with the verdicts you have reached," he said.
He released Ms Hawkins on continuing bail for a further week to allow the mother of two "to get her affairs in order" after being petitioned to do so by her counsel Ken Fogarty, who told the judge that his client was "still maintaining her innocence".
It took more than 25 minutes for the court clerk to read out each charge and for the jury foreman to reply.
Throughout it all, Ms Hawkins looked almost unnaturally calm and composed, staring into middle space with her chin resting on her clasped hands.
And when she raised a glass of water to her lips, her hand did not shake.
However, her face betrayed the stress of the ordeal as she looked deathly pale and lacking in sleep. Dressed in black, she had an expensive-looking olive green rain jacket by her side and a hair-tie wrapped around her wrist.
There was nobody there for her in court.
As the reading of the verdicts drew to a close, Adam Clayton slipped on to a courtroom bench, his face wreathed in a smile of obvious relief.
After the jury had completed its task, Ms Hawkins' barrister Ken Fogarty went over to whisper a word and Ms Hawkins gave a small but distinct hoot of dry laughter.
It had been a long and "grubby tale", as counsel for the prosecution had said in their opening statement of the trial.
Over the 17 years she had worked for the U2 bassist, the mother-of-two had gained his "absolute trust" to the extent that she had wound up as a signatory on two of his personal bank accounts with access to a "never-ending pot of money", the prosecution had told the jury.
"Deliberately, knowingly and cunningly", she had laid a false trail to cover her tracks when she wrote 181 cheques to deposit large chunks of money to her own account, a joint account with her then husband John Hawkins and to her credit card account, to which she had also linked cards for her two children.
The deception only emerged in 2008 when she confessed to Mr Clayton that she had used around €15,000 of his money to book flights to visit her children in the US and London. Weeping, she had told him that she blamed the stress of her marriage break-up for her conduct.
