A WITNESS in the trial of an alleged hitman and the woman accused of hiring him said he felt intimidated and in shock when being interviewed by gardaí, a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Builder John Keating told Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting, that a woman garda told him she would have to put him in handcuffs after he had given evidence earlier in the trial that provided a partial alibi for Sharon Collins.
Ms 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 PJ, Robert and Niall Howard between August 1st, 2006 and September 26th, 2006. Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to kill the three men.
Mr Eid denies demanding €100,000 from Robert Howard to cancel the contracts.
Mr Keating had given evidence on June 5th under cross-examination that he had been with Ms Collins for a substantial portion of the morning of August 16th, 2006, a key date in the prosecution case.
The prosecution says that this was the date that lyingeyes98@yahoo.com and Hire_hitman@yahoo.com struck a deal to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard.
The jury has heard that there was significant e-mail and phone traffic relating to the plot that day.
Mr Keating told Michael Bowman, counsel for Ms Collins, in his earlier evidence that he had spent the morning with Ms Collins discussing various jobs that needed to be done at the house she shared with Mr Howard, and discussing putting an extension on her mother’s house.
He said Ms Collins did stop off once at the offices of Downes Howard, the family business, but stayed only a few minutes.
However, he agreed with Mr O’Connell that he had not told gardaí about this meeting when he gave them his initial statement. He said he was contacted by Ms Collins’s elder son, Gary, shortly before the start of the trial. Gary asked him specifically about August 16th. He said he agreed to meet Eugene O’Kelly, Ms Collins’s solicitor, in Dublin to provide a statement.
Mr Keating said he was absolutely certain that he had met Ms Collins on August 16th, as he had just returned from holidays in England. He showed the court a receipt from a Stena Line loyalty scheme that detailed a trip from Rosslare to Fishguard on July 27th returning on August 14th.
He denied he had written details of his meeting with Ms Collins in his diary at a later date in a different pen. Mr Keating said he often used different pens to write. “Sometimes you could be looking for a pen and you still wouldn’t find one.”
He said that he had been intimidated when he finished giving his evidence by a female garda who said to him: “John, I should put you in handcuffs.”
Det Garda Therese Flannery told Mr O’Connell that it was her responsibility to marshal witnesses called to give evidence in the trial, and bring them to lunch. She said she had gestured holding her hands up as if bound to indicate that they should keep together, but had never said the name “John” or used the word “handcuffs”.
The trial will continue today.