The summing up of counsel in this bizarre case left PJ Howard’s sons expressionless and the accused Sharon Collins distraught
AFTER A month’s absence, PJ Howard’s two sons slipped into court a few minutes before prosecuting counsel Una Ní Raifeartaigh began her closing address. They sat next to the jury box, across from a hollow-eyed Sharon Collins and her two sons, Gary and David.
The Howards watched, expressionless, as Ní Raifeartaigh quoted Shakespeare – “treachery lies in honeyed words” – and finished with the chorus from the Eagles’ Lyin’ Eyes: “You can’t hide those lyin’ eyes/ And your smile is a thin disguise/ I thought by now you’d realise/ There ain’t no way to hide those lyin’ eyes.”
As she read out the verse, Gary Collins held his mother’s hand tightly while David shook his head.
Counsel accused Ms Collins of causing RTÉ broadcaster Gerry Ryan to be called as a witness to feed her ego and of “haggling about the price of three lives” with the hitman. She also noted the “little tone of flirtation” in the e-mails between Lying Eyes and the hitman – including a line “You’re so handsome” after pictures had been exchanged.
“No offence to Mr Eid, but he’s not exactly an oil painting.”
Mr Eid’s head remained bowed. She remarked that there might be a view that the case was trivial since no one was actually killed, but “ricin – one of the most deadly poisons known to man – was found in the prison cell of Mr Eid and takes [the case] out of fantasy”.
The potency of the same ricin would be questioned some hours later by Michael Bowman, defence counsel for Sharon Collins, who poured scorn on the search operation in Limerick prison.
“The ordnance men in spacesuits go in, tear the place apart, locate the third-most-toxic substance known to humanity, take it to Commander Butler – and what is he wearing? Rubber gloves. And no mask . . . ” After this they would fly it off in a military plane to a UK lab, wrapped in a plastic Ziplock bag.
But the prosecution case was squarely that it was ricin, said Ms Ní Raifeartaigh, proceeding to list “14 facts” that she said made Ms Collins the same person as Lying Eyes. As for Mr Eid, she said, “the prosecution would say he’s open and shut . . . He’s bang to rights.” What proved his intention to kill – and not just to extort money? The ricin. “We’re dealing with fools here but they’re dangerous fools,” she said about Eid’s alleged attempt to “outsource” the hits to an Irish solder who unwittingly signed up to a hitman website.
She mentioned PJ Howard (whose last appearance in court had culminated in a kiss for Ms Collins). But PJ’s affection, loyalty and trust were repaid by betrayal, deception and the most public humiliation imaginable, every night on the RTÉ news, she said.
His sons Robert and Niall “trusted this woman, were coming to her for support when their mother died. And their lives were to be snuffed out as they got in the way of her greed to look after herself and her own brood.”
Last of all, she said, were “Ms Collins’s own two sons: it gives no one any pleasure to look at these two boys sitting there day after day, who look crushed and angry at the things being said about their mother.
“Any decent child would do the same for their mother but should she be asking them? She has betrayed her own sons and made them unwitting allies in her own deceit . . .
“A man may smile and smile and be a villain,” she ended, reverting to Shakespeare.
Later, Michael Bowman spoke about how gardaí had “spurned opportunities” to investigate Sharon Collins’s own allegations, and accused them of being “delighted” to be hanging out with “special agents” in the US. “Nobody paid any attention to Sharon Collins’s story,” he said.
As he finished, the 45-year-old mother looked distraught, her hands clasping her boys’ arms, tears flowing down her face.
