This article is from page 17 of the 2008-06-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
ONE method of killing that was con- sidered was to put medications which could cause a heart attack into liquor, the trial has been told.
However, this was_ eventually deemed not possible, prosecution witness Teresa Engle told the court.
Ms Engle, partner of Essam Eid, confirmed that she has been given immunity from prosecution in this case, by the DPP.
Asked had she ever visited Ireland, she said she had, at the end of August or beginning of September 2006. She said she was due to meet Ashraf Gharbeiah, a friend of Essam’s, and
she stayed at the Queen’s Hotel in En- ny
“T was here to meet Ash. He was supposed to kill, PJ and Robert, no, Robert and Niall, the two sons,” she Said.
She said that she walked to Westgate Business Park, to see the Howards’ business.
“When Ash arrived, I had the previ- ous day before walked around to the business park to see where it was. Me and Ash walked there,’ she said.
Asked how she knew how to find it, She said, “From directions from Sha- ron.”
She said that Ash had “his own plan. He had several medications that
was supposed to cause a heart attack or for somebody to die.”
She said he was going to put these in liquor. “We’d been to a grocery store and looked at the liquors there. We walked to the business park and he decided the plan was not do-able. I think he left the next day.”
She said that she remained in Ire- land for a few days and then travelled to Spain. She was in Fuengirola for a day or two.
‘I was picking up a key to the apart- ment in Spain. I was to look around and find info for Essam . . the loca- tion . . go see the boat.”
Mr O’Connell asked her which apartment was she referring to and
she replied, “Mr Howard’s apartment in Spain.”
She said the keys to the apartment were left in an envelope for her at the hotel. She said she had directions to the apartment “on an email, from Sharon”’.
She said she sat outside a restaurant, down from the apartment “just to look and see if I’d see PJ or Sharon”.
“At that point I was starting to get sick. I just couldn’t bring myself to go in either. I went back to the room and I went back to Ireland for a day or two,” she said.
She said that when she returned to the US, Mr Eid was “furious, because the plan hadn’t been done. He started
working on a visa to come to Ireland to do it himself.”
Asked where the keys to the apart- ment in Spain ended up, she said that after she was arrested, she went to Ennis courthouse. “I wrapped them in tissue paper and put them in gar- bage in the women’s restroom at the courthouse,’ she said.
The witness said that she met Es- sam Eid in 2003 or 2004 at a time she was separated. They met at a casino in Detroit, Michigan. The two devel- oped a relationship and she moved in with him in Las Vegas. She said they married in Las Vegas. She had pre- viously married another man, Todd Engle, three times.