Clare woman took partners name on passport as 'gesture', court hears
A Clare woman accused of hiring a hitman to kill her partner and his two sons told gardaí she obtained a passport with her partner’s’ surname as a "gesture" to him a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Ms Sharon Collins (aged 45), with an address at Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road and Mr Essam Eid (52), an Egyptian man with a Las Vegas address Ennis have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill PJ, 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.
Detective Sergeant Michael Mahony told Ms Una Ni Raifeartaigh BL, prosecuting that in an interview on June 25, 2007, Ms Collins said she had wanted to get a passport in the name Sharon Howard to show her partner PJ Howard that she was happy to take his name.
“I thought he would like it. I liked the idea. I wanted to belong. There was nothing sinister about it. I wanted it for myself.”
She disagreed when it was suggested that Mr Howard had not wanted to be married to her, pointing out that they had signed a document to leave with his solicitor stating that they would never marry.
She admitted paying $1,295 to buy a Mexican proxy marriage over the Internet but said that it was a fake.
"It’s just a con job."
She said she had attempted to change her name by deed poll in April 2005 but the form had not been processed correctly.
Ms Collins told gardaí that she used the proxy marriage certificate to get a passport because her existing one had been water damaged and needed replacing. She said she had been surprised when the passport office accepted the certificate.
She said that she had felt bad about being deceitful and had burned the marriage certificate. She agreed with gardaí that PJ had not known what she was doing at the time but said that she told him in April 2007 when she learned the subject would be appearing in press reports.
She said she had told him when they met in Dublin. They had booked into the Westbury Hotel and she had been upset. When she told him, "he said to me at the time, is that what the big deal was about?"
She told gardaí: "He didn’t seem to think it was a big deal."
She said she had discussed the matter with him on several other occasions but he had always shrugged it off. She said she had brought it up in the car on the way into the interview.
However, the gardaí told her that Mr Howard had told them in an interview that morning, that he had no knowledge of the proxy marriage.
She agreed that she had conducted correspondence with Proxymarriages.com and signed Mr Howard’s name to emails.
One email, read out to the jury today, was sent from P.J_Howard@eircom.net and signed P.J.
Another email asked “what about inheritance? If one of us where to die we are worried about our respective children argued whether the marriage actually existed.”
A further email from the Irish Embassy in Mexico sent to Ms Collins in September 2005 read: “I have never come across a proxy marriage in Mexico and I doubt strongly that it would be possible.”
Ms Collins agreed that she had written a letter to the Gerry Ryan show on RTÉ radio which accused Mr Howard of sleeping with prostitutes and transvestites in April 2006.
She told gardaí she wrote it after arguing with Mr Howard in Spain about the same matters.
“He said at this point of his life he wasn’t going to change.”
She said she had asked him to get help telling him “it was an addiction and he would be a happier person if he dealt with it.”
She told gardaí Mr Howard told her “he was perfectly normal and that was that.”
She said she was frustrated with the situation and had gone out to email Maria Marconi, the woman she was receiving writing coaching from over the internet.
Ms Collins told gardaí that she had been calling Ms Marconi when calls from her mobile phone were made to Mr Eid’s phone number.
Ms Collins said she wrote much the same to Ms Marconi as she had written in the Gerry Ryan letter.
She told gardaí this was how the details appeared in an email from Lyingeyes98@yahoo.ie to Tony Luciano at Hire_hitman@yahoo.com
She denied having anything to do with the Lyingeyes email account.
The trial will continue tomorrow before Mr Justice Roderick Murphy and the jury of eight men and four women.
