It is a bizarre tale of a would-be assassin who turned out to be an Egyptian poker dealer in Las Vegas, a woman in an unhappy relationship with a tycoon and revelations of a fake marriage, sex clubs in Spain and a Jacobean-style poison plot.
They were the ingredients of one of the most unusual murder trials ever heard by Ireland’s central criminal court. The case reached its climax this week after a 45-year-old mother-of-two, Sharon Collins, was found guilty of conspiring to hire a hitman through a website to kill her partner and his two sons.
PJ Howard was worth €12m through property rentals. He owned homes in the west of Ireland and Spain as well as a boat called Heartbeat, named after his quadruple heart-bypass in 2000.
Five years after his heart surgery Howard was dating blonde divorcee Collins who, like him, had two sons from a previous marriage. But the match was not made in heaven, the court was told. Collins admitted that in April 2005 she wrote to Gerry Ryan, a popular Irish radio DJ, accusing Howard of frequenting prostitutes, transvestites and swingers’ clubs near Malaga on the Costa del Sol.
Yet despite this, she was so obsessed with marrying Howard that she turned to the internet, paying $1 000 to Proxymarriage.com for a Mexican marriage certificate in the name of Sharon Howard.
In August 2006, Collins contacted the website www.hitman.us.com. The jury was told that correspondence began between her and a man from the site who called himself Tony Luciano. Luciano was in fact an Egyptian poker dealer in Las Vegas, Essam Eid. Collins allegedly suggested arranging an accident for Howard and his sons, and supplied him with details of where the family lived and socialised. The would-be assassin offered an alternative — poison that would induce heart attacks.
The plot unravelled in September 2006 after Eid flew to Ireland and burgled the Howard family’s business, taking computers. He then arranged to meet Robert Howard, one of PJ’s sons, claiming to be able to identify the whereabouts of the equipment. He also warned the son that there was a contract out on him, his brother and their father, demanding €100 000 to have the contract terminated.
Howard contacted the Irish police and thus began a transatlantic investigation which included the FBI. Collins was arrested in February 2007 after examination of one of the stolen computers, which had been dumped in a Limerick hotel. It contained emails between her and the hitman, which included complaints from Collins that PJ Howard wanted to control her life, even down to asking her to have ”stranger sex”.
In one email, Collins wrote: ”His boys are going to suffer. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but I know that if my husband was dead and they were still here, they’d screw me.”
Collins and Eid, who was found guilty of demanding €100 000 from Howard and handling stolen property, will be sentenced on October 8. Collins has secured the help of a Los Angeles-based literary agent, after she told Ireland’s director of public prosecutions: ”I’ll write a book yet.” – guardian.co.uk