A former news editor of the Sunday Tribune has told the High Court that Ian Bailey told her he killed Sophie Toscan du Plantier to resurrect his career.
Helen Callanan said she was flabbergasted when Mr Bailey told her: "It was me, I did it, I killed her. I did it to resurrect my career".
Ms Callanan said the comment was made during a serious conversation she had with him to challenge him when she discovered the journalist she had working on the story was in fact the suspect.
She said it was the single biggest fiasco she had ever encountered.
It was inappropriate in so many ways and she felt he had deceived and duped her.
She said it was damaging to the newspaper's brand and it had not occurred to Mr Bailey, whom she knew as Eoin Bailey, to extricate himself from the story as soon as there was a whiff of suspicion.
"The seriousness of it didn't seem to have occurred to him. The moral compass was broken," she said.
When she discovered he was a suspect, she said she had to challenge him and his reaction was strange.
"I said Eoin I've been told you're a suspect and he just kept asking who told you that? He was quite cool and calm and kept asking that."
She said he had never apologised and had never contacted her except for one occasion when he phoned her from a phone box on Baggot Street where the newspaper's offices were located but she refused to go down and meet him.
During cross-examination she denied she was trying to blacken Mr Bailey.
She also refused to name the person who told her he was a suspect.
"I'm not going to breach a confidence. It was not the gardaí and in fact I rang them to complain that they had not told me."
Asked again to name the source of the information, she said: "If the court directs me to do something that is an entirely different matter but as a news editor it would be wrong of me to disclose that."
Mr Justice Hedigan refused to direct Ms Callanan to name the source of her information.
He told the jury the issue of journalistic privilege was often complex but the law was that unless there was a pressing social need or it was in the interests of justice a journalist could not be compelled to disclose their sources.
During cross-examination, Ms Callanan said she did not know how she was supposed to describe the level of shock she felt to discover the person who was reporting on the story was a suspect and was also now admitting the killing to her.
Ms Callanan said she appreciated that Mr Bailey now says his comment was a regrettable black joke but she said at the time she took it as a confession.
It was put to her that no one could have taken it as anything other than black humour.
"I did not find it humorous," she said.
She said there was no jocularity in the conversation, it was a serious conversation and she will never forget it.
It was put to her that gardaí had put the comments onto a new level when she reported it.
It was also suggested to her that she did not like Mr Bailey.
She said she had never met him.
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