Cleary pretended simply to be Hamilton's employer. According to journalist Paul Williams, she said in a ghost-written unverified memoir published by Williams in 1995 that Cleary had taken marriage vows with her in a private ceremony with no third party present.Phyllis Hamilton and Paul Williams, Secret Love: My Life with Father Michael Cleary, Dublin: Mainstream Publishing, 1995 She died in 2001 from ovarian cancer. Such a marriage ceremony, if it occurred, would not be legally binding under Irish law or canon law.
