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 to complain about her partner, a Central Criminal Court jury has heard.
Sharon 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, 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 Garda Peter Keenan told Una Ni Raifeartaigh BL, prosecuting, that an e-mail was found on the hard drive of an Iridium laptop computer seized by gardaí from PJ Howard's house.
Sent on April 4th, 2006, at about 5.20pm from the account sharoncollins@eircom.net, it said that Ms Collins found herself in an "unbearable situation" and was hoping 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 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 that even though she had refused to take part herself, she had "witnessed things that I sincerely wish I never had to see".
The e-mailed letter also claims 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 e-mails he had retrieved during a forensic examination of computers found in Mr Eid's Las Vegas home and seized by the FBI.
Several e-mails were recovered between the e-mail addresses Lyingeyes98@yahoo.ie and Hire_hitman@yahoo.com, which the prosecution say were used by Ms Collins and Mr Eid respectively.
In an e-mail dated August 15th, Lyingeyes wrote to Hire_hitman apologising for not being able to make phone contact. She says her son arrived home unexpectedly.
She writes that she is worried about what her children would think of her if they found out what she was planning. The e-mail states 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 20, the other almost 23 and away in Dublin.
She writes that the main reason for what she is planning is his "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 adds.
She writes that she never wants to be with another man and that she doesn't mind "if he has sex with hookers or transvestites, of which he is particularly fond, every day". The e-mail continues that because of her vulnerable position, "his boys are going to suffer now".
The trial will continue today.