Witness Marie Farrell has told the High Court gardaí told her they knew Ian Bailey had killed Sophie Toscan Du Plantier and they needed her to identify him as a man she had seen on key dates around the murder.
Ms Farrell said she was shown a video of Mr Bailey and told gardaí he was not the man.
But gardaí said they needed her to place him near the scene because they knew he had done it and that he would kill again.
Ms Farrell said she was assured there would never be a court case and she would only have to give a two-line statement.
She had told gardaí about the first two sightings of the man but had reported the third sighting anonymously as she did not want her husband to know where she was that night.
She said gardaí told her they knew she was the anonymous caller but that her husband would never find out.
She agreed to give the statement because she had been worried about her husband finding out and she believed that would be the end of it, she said.
Ms Farrell said she felt relieved and decided to just give the gardaí what they wanted.
She said a garda also promised her that a prosecution against her husband over car insurance would be "sorted out".
Ms Farrell is giving evidence in the action for damages taken by Mr Bailey against the Garda and the State arising out of his treatment as a suspect in the murder of Ms Toscan Du Plantier in west Cork in December 1996.
The State denies the claims.
Ms Farrell told the High Court she signed her name on up to eight blank pieces of paper at a Cork Garda Station in February 1997.
She said she was contacted by gardaí in the middle of February and asked if she would now make a statement. She agreed.
She said she went to Ballydehob Garda Station on 14 February after work.
She had originally been told gardaí would need only a two-line statement but at the garda station she said they told her they would need more detail.
She said she told them she was in a hurry. They asked her to sign a few pages and said they would work it out.
She said she thought they were just writing out that the man she had seen at a local bridge was Mr Bailey and said she did not give it a lot of thought.
She said she signed four or six or eight blank pages.
The statement identifies Mr Bailey as the man Mrs Farrell saw.
She said she had not made it and the man was not Mr Bailey.
She also said she had not made other statements also identifying Mr Bailey and the first time she saw them and other memos and questionnaires purporting to be a record of what she said was during an internal garda inquiry into the handling of the case in 2006.
Witness signed blank pages, court told
Asked how her signature came to be on the statements, Mrs Farrell said she presumed it came about because she had signed blank pages in Ballydehob Garda Station.
Asked what her understanding of the situation between herself and gardaí was, she said they said they would just fill in a couple of lines saying the man she saw at Cealfada bridge was the same man she had seen in Schull and that it was Ian Bailey.
"I thought they knew it was Ian Bailey and that they could not be wrong. It took the pressure off me because they said that is all they needed because as soon as he was charged he would admit it and there would be no court case."
When news of Ian Bailey's arrest reached her she said she thought:
"I hope it's not because I said it was him I saw at Cealfada bridge. I hope it was because of something else because people were convinced he was going to kill again, because the guards were telling everyone he was going to kill again.
"The gardaí said it would be a great help because they were putting away a very dangerous person and a very weird person.
"They were telling me he was into all sorts of weird things; that he would howl at the moon and that he would sit on a rocking chair on the beach during the full moon and ten lesbians would dance around him.
"They were really strange things they said about him and I believed them," Mrs Farrell added.
She said Garda Jim Fitzgerald became her best friend and was phoning her every day to see if she was ok.
He had also been told that her husband should appeal a conviction for no car insurance and that gardaí would not contest it, and this had happened.
MsFarrell said Det Garda Fitzgerald began phoning her several times a day and they would talk about "personal life, the investigation and everything".
She said he told her the best time to ring him was after 9pm when his work partner would not be with him.
She said he told her his work partner did not approve of some of the things he got up to and would not take the same risks as he would.
He would phone her at a public telephone box because he was concerned about calls being traced and suspicion about how much time he was spending on the phone to her.
He later gave her a mobile phone and said they would not have to worry anymore as it was a state phone and if calls were traced it would look like he was talking to another garda.
A tape of a phonecall between the two was played to the court during which Det Garda Fitzgerald talks about her having to be careful while drunk.
Ms Farrell said this was a reference to her husband not knowing at that time that she had signed blank pages for the gardaí and that they were making false statements.
"He was warning me that if I got drunk I might say something to Chris who did not know at this stage that it was not Ian Bailey".
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