Hitman accused denies Ricin plot

A former Las Vegas poker dealer accused of conspiring with a Clare woman to kill her partner and his two sons told gardai he didn’t know how a contact lens case that tested positive for Ricin came to be in his cell at Limerick prison a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.

A former Las Vegas poker dealer accused of conspiring with a Clare woman to kill her partner and his two sons told gardaí he did not know how a contact lens case that tested positive for Ricin came to be in his cell at Limerick prison, a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.

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

Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to kill 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.

Mr Eid told gardaí he had never worn contact lenses and at one point accused them of planting the case in his cell, Detective Garda Jarlaith Fahy told prosecuting counsel Ms Una Ni Raifeartaigh BL.

He said Mr Eid denied having a conversation with him in Limerick prison, where Mr Eid had been held since his arrest following the burglary of the Howard family business in September 2006 in which he told him his contact lenses had been lost two months after his arrival in prison.

Mr Eid also denied having anything to do with emails sent to and from the address [e-mail]. He told gardaí that his name did not appear once in the emails and they didn’t even sound like him.

He said he was not the only person who used the computer at his house and said either of his two wives, Lisa Eid or Teresa Engle, could have typed the emails.

He denied having any knowledge of a recipe for Ricin found on the computer seized from his home in Las Vegas.

Det gda Fahy agreed with Mr Michael Collins BL, counsel for Mr Eid, that Mr Eid had been in custody since his arrest in September 2006. He had described it to gardaí during his interviews that it was “the longest holiday of his life”.

The jury also heard from Ms Emma Stubberfield, a microbiologist who worked in conjunction with LGC Limited to test for toxins for the British Home Office.

On Friday the jury heard that gardaí flew the contact lens case by military plane to the LGC laboratory to get confirmation of an earlier field test which tested positive for Ricin.

Ms Stubberfield said she had used the ELISA test, which stands for enzyme-linked immunoassay, to test for the presence of the deadly plant-based toxin.

She told prosecuting counsel Mr Tom O’Connell SC that she received three samples from LGC. One of them was a control sample and the other two were taken from each side of the lens case.

She said that the first sample from the case gave a weak positive result but the second one gave a much stronger result and indicated that Ricin was present in the sample.

She told Mr Jonathon Bowman BL, defending Ms Collins, that the test had been fully validated to test for Ricin although she agreed that there were some non-toxic compounds that would have bonded with the antibodies used to create the positive result.

Detective Sergeant Michael Moloney told Ms Ni Raifeartaigh, Ms Collins denied sending emails to Tony Luciano at [e-mail].

She told gardaí that she had nothing to gain from the death of P.J Howard or his two sons and said she had discussed this with P.J and her solicitor.

She said she could not explain how P.J.'s American Express credit card had been used to pay for flights to Ireland for Essam Eid and Teresa Engle but said that her purse had gone missing and would have had the card number in it.

Mr Paul Shingles, an investigator for American Express, told Ms Ni Raifeartaigh that Mr Howard’s card had been used to make five disputed payments between September 18 and September 25, 2006 amounting to a total of €1,980.76.

The money had been refunded to Mr Howard as the card had not been present for these payments.

Mr Shingles said that on September 22 a caller rang the American Express helpline and enquired about the credit limit on the card. When asked for the maiden name of Mr Howard’s mother there was a brief pause before the caller hung up.

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