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, complaining about her partner a jury has heard.
Sharon Collins (45), with an address at 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 P.J., 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.
Detective Garda Peter Keenan told the Central Criminal Court the email to the RTÉ radio programme was found on the hard drive of a laptop computer seized by gardaí from P.J. Howard's house.
The email, sent on April 4th, 2006, said that Ms Collins found herself in an "unbearable situation" and was hoping that 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 that 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 even though she had refused to take part herself she said she had "witnessed things that I sincerely wish I never had to see."
The letter also claims that 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 the court about emails he had taken during a forensic examination of computers found in Mr Eid's Las Vegas home and seized by the FBI.
Several emails were recovered between the email addresses
Lyingeyes98@yahoo.ieand
Hire_hitman@yahoo.com, addresses which the prosecution say were used by Ms Collins and Mr Eid respectively.
In an email 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 says she is worried about what her children would think of her if they found out what she was planning.
The email goes on to say that Lyingeyes' husband "resents any time I spend with my boys and tried to keep me away from them."
She says he wants to control every aspect of her life and has a dreadful temper and makes sure she has no money. Lyingeyes says that she does want to inherit Mr Howard's money but says the main reason she wanted him dead was because he is "continually trying to force me to go out and pick a stranger for sex."
The trial will continue tomorrow before Mr Justice Roderick Murphy and the jury of eight men and four women.