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MEDICAL evidence suggests that a crucial 90 minutes elapsed before Katy French was rushed to hospital on the night she collapsed in the home of Kieron 'the Wolf' Ducie.
At her inquest today Ducie and his then girlfriend Ann Corcoran gave evidence that they got their times mixed up in original statements. They deny any time was wasted in getting the model help.
But sources told the Sunday World that their version of events about the model's collapse at their home didn't add up with her medical condition, body temperature, and blood and urine tests.
It is understood that it took a medical team almost 20 minutes to restart her heart after she arrived at the hospital and that she had six cardiac arrests before they could stabilise her in critical condition on life support.
Her body temperature was surprisingly low and sources close to the medical team say it had dropped to 35 degrees as they battled to save her. Both Ducie - a €40,000-per-year truck driver - and Corcoran insisted that Katy had fallen out of bed and had a seizure around 8am, but she only arrived at the hospital after 10am.
A later Garda investigation, headed by Superintendent Michael Devine, estimated that she should have arrived by 8.30am. In the weeks that followed her death officers searched her Citywest apartment where they found a variety of slimming pills, steroids and anti-obesity medication.
This week, both Ducie and Corcoran pleaded guilty to drug offences from the weekend she collapsed at their home. They admitted they procured another man - Russell Memery - to possess cocaine for the purpose of sale or supply to another. However, Katy's inquest heard that she had taken nothing like the €200 amount of cocaine that was bought from Memery, and that her blood alcohol level was less than 10 milligrams, which is negligible.
At Trim Circuit Court, Judge Leonie Reynolds was told a second charge would not be pursued against the pair - that they intentionally or recklessly engaged in conduct related to the supply of cocaine to Ms French and failed to get medical assistance in a timely fashion, which created a substantial risk of death or serious harm to another.
The decision to drop the charge was taken by the DPP. It is understood that evidence the State had against the pair was largely circumstantial and medics could not definitively say whether her life could have been saved had she been presented at the hospital any earlier.
It is understood that both Ducie and Corcoran complicated the medical response as they continued to insist to doctors when they brought her to hospital that they had not seen Katy taking cocaine - at one point Ducie insisted that he abhorred drugs.
Both said that she had drank two bottles of champagne, plus vodka and Red Bull before retiring to a downstairs bedroom at their home in Lambertstown Manor, Kilmessan, County Meath. Yet there was little more than a glass of alcohol in her bloodstream.
They claimed they heard a loud bang some time after 8am and found Katy having a seizure on the floor. They said they carried her to the back of their jeep and rushed her straight to hospital. According to their version of events, the journey would have taken nearly two hours and 15 minutes - yet Kilmessan is just a quarter of an hour from the A&E.
Even after her death, they continued their lies about the cocaine that they finally admitted they helped procure for her. They insisted they didn't see her taking cocaine or know that she was a drug user.
One member of the medical team who dealt with the pair in Navan hospital told Gardai that she had accompanied Ann to the jeep to collect Katy's handbag and was surprised to find that it was so clean considering it had transported someone as ill as the model to the A&E. There was no sign of vomit or anything else in the spotless car, despite the fact that they had been told that she had a seizure in the back of the jeep.
She had a number of cardiac arrests there after the initial heart resuscitation with CPR. She was then pumped with adrenalin and other medication to start her heart again. As they were trying to stabilise her, medics have told Gardai they were getting different stories from Ducie and Corcoran. One was that she had a seizure and was put to bed, but got up and continued to party.
A second untruth that hampered medics was that Katy drank a load of champagne and Red Bull and that she had a seizure. Nurses and doctors returned to Ducie and Corconan a number of times in an effort to build up an accurate history for admission. Both said they had not seen her taking anything, but she had gone to the toilet a lot during the night. Corcoran at one point told doctors that Katy had a drug problem.
However, anaesthetists, nurses and physicians believed that the patient had a longer period of cardiac arrest than what they were being told and eventually urine analysis confirmed that she had both cocaine in her system.
John French, Katy's father, made an official complaint to Gardai shortly before she was officially pronounced dead after doctors had expressed their concerns to him. That investigation lasted five years and involved interviews with some of the nation's best-known socialites.