A COMPUTER from the office of a man whose partner is accused of hiring a former Las Vegas poker dealer to kill him and his two sons had been used to search for hitmen on the internet, a Central Court Jury has heard.
Sharon Collins (45), Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road, Ennis, Co Clare, 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, 2006, and September 26th, 2006. Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to shoot the three 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, some computer cables, a digital clock and a poster of old Irish money and then handling the stolen items.
Det Sgt Michael Gubbins told Una Ní Raifeartaigh, prosecuting, that an Advent desktop computer, stolen from the offices of Downes Howard, had been used to search for the terms hitman, assassin and contract killer in August 2006.
On August 2nd, Det Sgt Gubbins said the Advent user searched using the term hitman and accessed the site Hitman.us, receiving an e-mail from killers@ hitman.us. They also searched for information on inheritance rights for both married and cohabiting couples, and for information on domestic violence.
The user visited the Revenue website and the Government information website looking for inheritance information and also visited Irishwills.com.
Det Sgt Gubbins said the user also accessed the registration page for a Yahoo e-mail account and soon after accessed the e-mail account of Lyingeyes98@yahoo.ie. The computer was also used to access an Eircom e-mail account for Ms Collins and an e-mail was sent from Ms Collins's e-mail account to Lyingeyes.
On August 8th the user booked a flight to Malaga in the name of Sharon Collins and accessed her Eircom e-mail account. The Lying eyes e-mail account was logged into seconds after the user logged out of the Sharon Collins account.
He said the user also visited the AIB website several times getting a quote for a personal loan for between €17,000 and €20,000. They also bought a three-month supply of the weight-loss drug Reductil from an online pharmacy website in the name of Sharon Collins.
At 10.01pm, the user visited a page on the hitmanforhire.net website which gave details "how to order a contract killing".
The user kept searching for the terms "assassins for hire, assassination", revisiting the Hitmanforhire.net site at 10.11pm and clicked on the submit button on the contact page.
On August 16th, an e-mail was sent from Lyingeyes to Tony Luciano, a contact from Hitmanfor hire.us, and signed with the name "Sharon".
Det Sgt Gubbins said he had also examined a Toshiba laptop belonging to Robert Howard, which had also been stolen from the offices of Downes Howard on September 25th, 2006.
He examined the internet usage for the 24-hour period the laptop was missing. He told Ms Ní Raifeartaigh the person using the laptop had searched for American baseball scores. They had also accessed the e-mail accounts of Hire_hitman @yahoo.com; tonyluciano 2001@ yahoo.com; esssameid@yahoo. com and tengle2005@yahoo. com.
Last week the jury heard from Teresa Engle, one of Mr Eid's two wives, who said she had travelled with him to Ireland to carry out a contract on Mr Howard.
A second laptop, an Iridium that had been taken from the house Mr Howard shared with Ms Collins, was also examined. Det Sgt Gubbins said there had been a user profile on the laptop called Sharon but it had been deleted on October 13th, 2006.
An analysis of the Iridium laptop showed repeated visits to lyingeyes Yahoo account and Ms Collins's Eircom account on August 15th and 16th.