This article is from page 12 of the 2008-07-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
SHARON Collins denied that she was motivated by money, in an in- terview with gardai in June 2007, the trial heard.
She told gardai “money does not float my boat at all”, in the June 26 interview.
Detective Sergeant Michael Molo- ney told the trial that she denied that she would use a Mexican marriage certificate obtained over the internet
to claim the Howards’ money when her partner PJ and his two sons Rob- ert and Niall were dead.
She told gardai that the wedding certificate had not looked genuine. “I haven’t the certificate. I burnt it. I wish I kept it. If you saw it you would see it was not authentic, not lr
She said Robert and Niall didn’t like the idea of Mr Howard becom- ing engaged to her.
‘There was a great deal of dissat-
isfaction in the camp with Niall and Robert when PJ and I came out and got engaged,” she told gardai.
Ms Collins claimed that it was this reaction that had spurred her into paying over €1,000 for a proxy mar- riage over the internet.
“It was just an act of defiance on my behalf, a private one,” she said.
She claimed that she had told Mr Howard about the proxy marriage although he told gardai he knew nothing about it.
“PJ is very straight and if PJ would say I never heard that when he knew that he did you must have done one hell of a job on him,” she told eV KONE
She said she would have signed a pre-nuptial agreement if they had been legally binding in Ireland and said she would have been happy with “just a church wedding”.
Detective Garda Brendan Rouine said that Ms Collins claimed that her writing mentor, Maria Marconi, ex-
isted, despite the fact that gardai had failed to find proof of her existence. She claimed she had kept copies of material she had produced in writ- ing exercises on a disc but had not kept it when she stopped writing. She denied she despised it when PJ asked her to have sex with other men. “That hasn’t been a problem at all since.” She said she did not despise Mr Howard. “Anybody who knows me knows that I don’t and I don’t do good acting. I’m bad at it.”