Clare woman in hitman trial wrote to 'Gerry Ryan Show'

A Clare woman on trial for hiring a hitman to kill her partner and his two sons wrote to 'The Gerry Ryan Show' several months before the events she is accused of, complaining about her partner, a Central Criminal Court jury has heard.

Ms Sharon Collins (aged 45), with an address at Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road, Ennis and Mr Essam Eid (aged 52), an Egyptian man with a Las Vegas address have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard between August 1, 2006 and September 26, 2006.

Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to shoot the three men.

Mr Eid denies demanding €100,000 from Mr Robert Howard to cancel the contracts. He also denies breaking into the Howard family business at Westgate Business Park and stealing two computers, some computer cables, a digital clock and a poster of old Irish money and then handling the stolen items.

Detective Garda Peter Keenan told Ms Una Ni Raifeartaigh BL, prosecuting, the email was found on the hard drive on an Iridium laptop computer seized by gardaí from PJ Howard’s house.

Sent on April 4, 2006 at around 5.20pm from the account [e-mail], the email said that Ms Collins found herself in an “unbearable situation” and was hoping that her story would be aired to “clarify things” for her and push her into “making the move that frightens me so much”.

In an attached letter, only a portion of which was found, she accused her partner of using prostitutes and transvestites while in his holiday home in Malaga.

Ms Collins claimed that Mr Howard would constantly pester her to have “strange sex” or sex with another man.

She said he would take her to swingers clubs and even though she had refused to take part herself she said she had “witnessed things that I sincerely wish I never had to see.”

The letter also claims that her partner had urged her to become a prostitute.

In the letter Ms Collins says she was called “boring and a stick-in-the mud” for not wanting to do as she was told but said anyone seeing them as a couple would find it hard to believe “he is like that”.

The jury also heard from Det Sgt Michael Gubbins who told Ms Ni Raifeartaigh about emails he had taken during a forensic examination of computers found in Mr Eid’s Las Vegas home and seized by the FBI.

Several emails were recovered between the email addresses [e-mail] and [e-mail], addressed with the prosecution say were used by Ms Collins and Mr Eid respectively.

In an email dated August 15, Lyingeyes wrote to Hire_hitman apologising for not being able to make phone contact. She says her son arrived home unexpectedly. “He’s a good kid and said he wanted to spend some quality time with me, as I’m going away on Wednesday.”

She says she is worried about what her children would think of her if they found out what she was planning. “Anyway I was sitting with my son last night and thinking if he only knew what his mother was planning.”

The email continues that “my boys would be devastated if they thought I would do such a thing.”

Lyingeyes explains that she has two sons from her first marriage, one of whom is 20, the other almost 23 and away in Dublin.

She says this earlier marriage, entered into when she was 19 was “a disaster” but that she has a good relationship with her former husband since their divorce.

The email goes on to say that Lyingeyes’ husband “resents any time I spend with my boys and tried to keep me away from them”.

She says he wants to control every aspect of her life and has a dreadful temper and makes sure she has no money. Lyingeyes says that she does want to inherit - “I want my home and an income of course I do”, but says the main reason is because he is “continually trying to force me to go out and pick a stranger for sex”.

However, “the mother of my boys is not a slut”. She says that she never wants to be with another man and that she does not mind “if he has sex with hookers or transvestites, of which he is particularly fond, every day”.

The email continues that because of her vulnerable position, “his boys are going to suffer now”. She says: “I wish so much that it didn’t have to be like this, but then again I know that if my husband was dead and they were still here they’d screw me anyway.”

Lyingeyes says she has no choice: “I want to protect myself and my boys.”

The trial will continue tomorrow before Mr Justice Roderick Murphy and the jury of eight men and four women.