This article is from page 86 of the 2008-05-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 86 JPG
ANemail account lyingeyes98 @yahoo. ie was set up by Sharon Collins ‘for the purpose of hiring a hitman’, ac- cording to the Prosecution.
The State alleges the account was set up on August 2, 2006 on a desk computer at the Howards’ business premises at Westgate Business Park in Ennis.
Senior Counsel for the Prosecution Tom O’Connell told the jury that on August 8, 2006, that email address established contact with an email ad- dress ‘hitmanforhire@ yahoo.com’.
Telling the jury the email address would be “engraved in your memo- ries by the end of the case”, Mr O’Connell said it is the State’s case that Essam Eid operated that email using the alias Tony Luciano.
‘Emails were sent from that email address, signed Tony Luciano. Serv- ices offered by hitmanforhire were contract killings,” he said.
He said that after August 8, 2006, several emails were exchanged between the two email addresses and on August 15, “a contract was made between the person behind ‘lyingeyes’ and ‘hitman’ to kill PJ
Howard and his two sons at the price Oy LOR O00 ne
He said that $50,000 was the “‘nor- mal price” but because there were three, it was $90,000.
He said that on August 15, Ms Collins made a downpayment of €15,000, on foot of that contract.
“She sent the €15,000 in cash on that date by FedEx courier services from Shannon,” he said, adding that €13,000 was withdrawn from her own bank account and €2,000 from the credit union. She sent the money to Teresa Engels in Las Vegas, he PALO
“At that time, Teresa Engels ap- peared to be his wife. She lived with Essam Eid in Las Vegas at that ad- dress, with his previous wife, Lisa Eid,’ said Mr O’Connell.
He said that Essam Eid travelled to Ireland on September 24, 2004 and booked into the Two Mile Inn Hotel in Limerick. He said that the Egyp- tian native burgled the Howards’ business premises at Westgate Busi- ness Park in Ennis on September 25.
“It was an inside job. There was no evidence of any forced entry. Who- ever entered the premises that night had the keys and also had the alarm
code. It would seem the purpose of the burglary was to get rid of in- criminating evidence. The following day when gardai carried out a search of a room at the Two Mile Inn, they found keys to the office premises. It is the State’s case these were provid- ed by Ms Collins. They were left in Ennis to be picked up and used then to remove the potentially incriminat- ing computer,’ he said.