THE WOMAN accused of hiring a former Las Vegas poker dealer to kill her partner and his two sons told gardaí she had been blackmailed into sending €15,000 to his co-accused's Nevada address, the jury at the Central Criminal Court was told.
The trial heard that Sharon Collins told gardaí she had nothing to do with any plot to kill her partner, PJ, and his sons, Robert and Niall Howard. "If anything happened to PJ, I would be out on my ear. We did nothing. We have nothing in place yet. We were going to but we have nothing done."
She allegedly told gardaí: "Every relationship has ups and downs but you don't go out and try and kill somebody."
Ms Collins said: "You don't know how much I love that man and Robert is like a son to me."
Det Sgt Michael Moloney said Ms Collins told gardaí she had become friendly with her writing mentor, Maria Marconi. It is the prosecution's case that Ms Marconi does not exist.
Ms Collins (45), Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road, Ennis, and Essam Eid (52), an Egyptian man with a Las Vegas address, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard between August 1st and 26th September 2006.
Ms Collins denies hiring Mr Eid to shoot the men.
Mr Eid denies demanding €100,000 from Robert Howard to cancel the contracts. He also denies breaking into the Howard family business at Westgate Business Park and stealing two computers, computer cables, a digital clock and a poster and then handling the stolen items.
Det Sgt Moloney told Una Ní Raifeartaigh, prosecuting, that Ms Collins said she had begun to receive threatening e-mails after the apartment of her American writing mentor, Maria Marconi, was broken into.
She told gardaí she no longer had Ms Marconi's contact details because her e-mail account and computer address book had been wiped some time before her arrest in February 2007.