But despite her self sufficiency the single life was not for Collins so, in November 1998, when P.J. Howard walked into her life, she seized the chance.
P.J. Howard was seen as a particularly good catch. By the time he started going out with Collins he was a multimillionaire. He had built up his business from the car dealership he started in the seventies to a quartet of property companies that owned and managed an extensive portfolio of property across counties Clare, Limerick and Cork. An intensely private man, he was estimated to be worth €60 million, though Howard would describe himself as being merely ‘comfortable’. He was certainly comfortable enough to sweep Collins off her feet and was in a position to shower her with expensive gifts. Within weeks she had moved into his large house on the Kildysart Road.
When they met, in November 1998, he was still in mourning for his partner of over six years, Bernie Lyons, who had died from cancer in the February of that year. He had met Bernie while he was still living with his wife, Theresa, who he had married in 1974. When the marriage broke down in 1992, he moved in with Bernie and they stayed together until her death. His two sons, Robert and Niall stayed with their mother. P.J. Howard and Bernie had been a very close couple and he was devastated when she died, but when he met Collins there was an immediate attraction.
He was captivated by her and he lost no time in showering her in expensive gifts; perfume, jewellery, a Rolex watch. The woman who had always fancied flash cars and the kind of security only money can buy allowed herself to be wooed. When he invited her and her sons to his house for Christmas she accepted and there they stayed, only leaving once after that for a couple of days the following February because Howard needed a few days to himself to mark the anniversary of Bernie’s death. Collins may have been resentful of the position Bernie continued to inhabit in Howard’s heart but she didn’t show it.
According to all accounts Collins and P.J. Howard were madly in love at that time. It was still very early in the relationship when Howard asked her if she would be willing to spend the rest of her life with him. She agreed. They weren’t able to marry since Howard had decided he did not want to divorce his estranged wife, but Collins accepted the situation for the time being. She had found the security she had been looking for. Despite their mutual need for one another they were hardly an obvious couple. She was a flirtatious blonde 14 years his junior. There is no doubt that Collins was well aware of this disparity.
But it was one thing having her own opinion of how the relationship must look, other people thinking the same thing, however, was quite another. Collins was aware that some people might think she was simply a gold digger and she was determined that Howard would not come round to their way of thinking. She became the model partner. So much so that Howard would tell the court in her defence that she was selfless to a fault. If he ever gave her a few hundred euros to herself she would spend the money on her sons and only take a little perhaps for a new frock. Collins was building her persona well. In 2000 Howard underwent a quadruple bypass operation and Collins seized her chance to play Florence Nightingale. She tended his every whim, looked after his medication and nursed him back to full health. By the time he was back on his feet their relationship was stronger than ever.
Howard loved the sun and around the time he met Collins he had bought a penthouse apartment in the affluent Spanish town of Fuengirola in the Costa del Sol. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor of the Las Palmeras apartment and hotel complex. It was a stone’s throw from the beach and packed with British and Irish bars and clubs. There was golf, a marina and the standard Malaga gift shop strip. There was even a Dunnes Stores if he should fancy a taste of home. As soon as the doctors gave him the all clear after his bypass operation he decided to pass over the management of his businesses to his sons and spend more time in Spain. He bought a boat, which, on the advice of a friend, he called ‘the Heartbeat’ in honour of his new lease of life. He moored it at the marina in nearby Benalmádena. Life was good and would have been perfect but for the fact that Collins’s sons were still in school so she refused to spend as much time in Spain as he wanted her to. It was one of the few things they rowed about but until the boys had left school there wasn’t much to be done.
Then in 2003 a tragedy hit the family that would change everything. 20-year-old Niall Howard arrived home for lunch one day to the house he shared with his mother Theresa. She was not downstairs as normal so he went to find her. He found her in bed. She had suffered a severe brain haemorrhage and was dying. Niall was traumatised and the tragic event impacted on the whole family. Niall moved into Ballybeg House, unable to continue living in the place where his mother had died. Collins is said to have treated him as one of her own children and they became very close over the next few months. Niall didn’t want to stay in Ballybeg House though. After a month he moved into a self-contained flat in the house his brother had bought in Doora on the outskirts of Ennis.
He decided to raze his mother’s house and completely rebuild it. Knowing Collins had experience in interior design he asked for her help. Collins gave it gladly. She had become a vital part of the Howard family, and was even helping out in the family business. Several days a week she would sit at reception taking care of general secretarial duties. It stopped her from being a kept woman, although Howard still topped up her €850 a month wages. She would protest she wasn’t a very good secretary but she had already impressed P.J. Howard with her computer skills, which had developed and updated considerably since her abandoned course in Limerick all those years ago. All in all they were a solid family unit.
However, Theresa’s death opened up another possibility. For the first time in the relationship marriage was on the table—as far as Collins was concerned. She made it clear that she had always wanted to marry again. There was nothing to stop them now. Howard was more reticent but he wanted to make her happy—so he proposed. She was ecstatic. They planned a quiet wedding in Rome in October 2005 with a lavish reception for all their friends and family in Spanish Point, County Clare when they got back.
But there was still a hitch. Howard was aware how much work both Robert and Niall had put into the family businesses since they had been old enough to start working in them. Since his bypass they were running the family empire between them. They were both directors and Robert now handled the day to day running of Downes & Howard, the flagship business of the family’s portfolio. Howard wanted to make sure they were rewarded for all their hard work. As far as he was concerned, they had to inherit the business after his death. That was where the problem lay. A wedding would put Collins into the front running in the inheritance stakes, so a solution had to be found. Collins for her part was absolutely determined to get married. She put her foot down and offered him an ultimatum. If she didn’t get a wedding ring he wouldn’t get her. Howard looked desperately around for a solution. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. His sons were important to him and he was aware how hard they had worked, but Collins was the woman he loved and he was not about to let her walk away.
Then he thought of it. A prenuptial agreement could solve all their problems. Howard and Collins both contacted their solicitors to draw up the documentation but it wasn’t going to be that easy. Howard discovered that a prenuptial agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on under Irish law. No matter what they signed and how they wanted Howard’s assets divided up, Collins would still end up floating to the top of the pile when it came to heirs.
In the end they agreed to compromise and decided to make private vows to each other in a church, but the first cracks in the relationship began to show. It was all the more difficult to look past the more fundamental problems that had been running in the background throughout the relationship. Collins began to feel the strain. She wanted the security of a marriage, as she knew she had no legal rights to his fortune should their relationship break up, or should anything happen to him. She felt that she had put in the work, and she deserved her share of his wealth.
Sh
e knew that she would have to be patient to get what she wanted, and so she bided her time and went ahead with the private exchange of vows in November 2005. It wasn’t ideal, though, and she secretly began to fume about the situation she found herself in. She pretended that she was perfectly content with the status quo, but in truth it began to play on her mind until she was consumed by what she saw as a problem. She wanted to get married.
If Howard wouldn’t marry her, she would find her own way around the problem. After all, she had looked after herself in the past and she could do it again; but this time she decided to take drastic measures.
With this level of bitterness bubbling away inside her, for Collins the fairy tale had turned into a ticking bomb. On 2 August 2006, sitting at her computer in Downes & Howard, she would take the step that would ruin her life and wreck the lives of those around her. After a little desultory surfing Collins typed in the address of the Yahoo home page and applied to open an email account with the web based service that she assumed could offer her total anonymity for what she planned to do next.
She had a plan; she just needed an anonymous email account to put it into action. As she sat and thought about her situation, suddenly the words of an Eagles song, Lying Eyes, floated into her head. Her own situation could easily be said to bear a striking resemblance to it.
‘A rich old man
And she won’t have to worry
She’ll dress up all in lace and go in style …
You can’t hide your lying eyes,
And your smile is a thin disguise.’
She thought she had created a ‘perfect’ email address with the alias ‘Lying Eyes’. To complete the email, she simply added the year in which she had become P.J. Howard’s partner—[email protected].
In the course of her trial it would become a byword for the more bizarre aspects of the case but for the moment it was something only slightly more than a private joke. Spurred on by her new-found anonymity she started searching for a final solution. The answer she hit upon would set into motion a plot that would span both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For the object of her ardour and ambition, sitting alone on his yacht in the Costa del Sol, there would be no happily ever after.
CHAPTER 3:
GAMES AND DAMES
While Collins was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with her lot, the enterprise that would prove her undoing was being born. Perhaps if she had known how hitmanforhire.net came into being, or who was behind the website she would have thought twice about registering. The smiling joker driving the yellow Corvette was not the dapper Sicilian hitman the website had promised, but a 49-year-old Egyptian poker dealer in Las Vegas, whose love life was every bit as complex as the one she had complained of herself.
Essam Ahmed Eid was born in Cairo in 1955, the year before the Suez Crisis brought economic and social upheaval. The world that Eid was growing up in was changing rapidly. The new Egyptian government had set about removing the signs of British occupation and a new cultural nationalism was in the air. It was a turbulent place to grow up. Eid was conscripted into the Egyptian army as a young man. He would later tell gardaí that he had once been a warrior and knew how to kill with his bare hands. But a career in the military did not suit the young Eid and he earned himself a degree in accountancy before leaving for America and the promise of a new life.
Eid was a charmer. Anyone who watched his trial could see how the boy from Cairo had grown into a charming man, ready with a smile or a joke for anyone. He turned up at the Four Courts each day in the white and blue prison services van that brought the most hardened criminals in to face the courts. The poker dealer had been refused bail as he was considered too big a flight risk. Every morning he walked the gamut of photographers standing outside the side gate to the Four Courts, a more practical entrance for those in custody than the fortress-like main gate. He treated the snappers with nonchalant disregard, laughing as he shared a joke with his prison guard escort. He would often be smiling in his daily photograph, unusual for someone in his position. He even charmed his cell mates in Limerick Prison, becoming the chief lecturer in a series of impromptu poker classes where he could give them the benefit of his gambling expertise.
He would joke that he wanted Al Pacino to play him in the movie of the trial, but the character that was painted by his defence was more bumbling Cohen Brothers villain than Noir gangster. The plot that had led him to the Irish courts could have been brilliant in its execution if greed had not got in the way.
He might have seemed a convincing gangster when he arrived on an Irish doorstep on an autumn evening, but Eid’s involvement in organised crime had only lasted for two outings, both of which ended in arrest. Essam Eid was no career criminal. As a friend of his told the FBI, he liked to ‘talk the talk not walk the walk.’ If he had continued talking he might have still had a job in the glamorous world of Vegas nightlife rather than earning his criminal record in an Irish jail.
He tried his hand at various careers including accountancy, and also worked as a travel agent before moving to Las Vegas where he discovered his talent for poker dealing. He lived and worked in a world where the names of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano were still legend, providing his choice of alter ego. Vegas, with its associations with Sinatra and the Rat Pack, the mob and prohibition, was the perfect place for hitmanforhire.net to be spawned. When Eid applied to work at the upmarket Bellagio casino he didn’t have a stain on his character. He was deemed a suitably steadfast employee to oversee the poker games that saw thousands of dollars change hands.
The Bellagio prides itself on being a little bit classier than some of the other casinos on the strip, and is situated next door to Sinatra’s old stomping ground, Cesar’s Palace, and the location for Ocean’s 11. Every evening the massive fountains at the front of the Bellagio give balletic displays to a soundtrack of classical music and movie themes. The shops in the adjoining arcade sell a pricier kind of tat with designer labels and the Fine Art Gallery and conservatory boast a hot house ‘botanical garden’ albeit with giant plaster frogs and over sized silk poppies. It’s the archetypal image of a Las Vegas casino, all bright lights and shiny things; gold glinting on the edge of every glance, the carpet muffling the footsteps of the tourists, the gamblers and the desperate.
Eid worked as a dealer on one of the forty or so poker tables, open for business day and night. During work he kept a very low profile dealing the cards and making sure all was fair as the stacks of chips rose and fell. All that money with the power that went with it must have been tempting. After all, his job at the Bellagio paid only $6.50 an hour; a sum barely above minimum wage, although it wasn’t the take-home pay that made working in a casino worthwhile—it was the tips. He could make hundreds in tips in one night. Eid would later tell gardaí he could earn up to $100,000 dollars a year, mainly from tips from the five star punters. In the world of high stakes poker, people show their gratitude to the person who dealt them the winning hand. It costs nothing to flip a chip from the growing pile in front of you to the dealer, especially when it keeps a losing run at bay. But while the money was good, Eid had a problem keeping it. Despite spending his working day watching the losers as well as the winners, he fancied his chances at making it big. The problem was that luck frequently deserted him when he finished work for the night and went to the Cannery Casino in North Las Vegas.
The Cannery was a far cry from the Bellagio. In the smoke-filled casino with a 1940s theme, metal legged chairs crowd around green baize gaming tables where Eid wasn’t the only one losing money. His money just seemed to evaporate and the idea of a scheme that would provide a steady flow of cash, or better still, a generous tax free cash injection seemed ever more attractive. For Eid was a man with responsibilities. He had a house, a child and a wife to care for and another wife had just moved in. A conscientious Sunni Muslim, he had grown up with the belief that polygamy was not just the preferable but the honourable thing to do. The Nevada authorities refused to accept polygamous uni
ons but Eid did not believe in monogamy and, after a string of girlfriends, he chose a second wife, Teresa Engle. As his finances started to dwindle he started looking for alternatives—and found them in a website called hitmanforhire.net.
Eid’s domestic arrangements were subject to endless speculation over the long weeks of his trial but the story behind them might have been far more mundane than they appeared. His original wife, Lisa Marsee, seems to have been totally unaware that a second marriage may or may not have taken place. She declined to be interviewed for this book but her story has already been told in the American courts. Eid met Lisa Marsee in Michigan during the Spring of 1999.
He had been under pressure from his friends to settle down and provide a stable home and mother figure for his young daughter, Aya, who was a child from a previous relationship. Lisa was a naïve, trusting woman who, at 33, wanted to start a family. She saw the chance to step into a ready-made family and took it. Eid was working at a travel agents at the time, as a wholesale sales rep for Suisse Air Airlines. He certainly seemed like a dependable type of guy. They were married within the year. But appearances can be deceiving. Eid did not turn out to be the model husband she was hoping for. According to friends who were around at the time, Eid was a serial philanderer who would have a different girlfriend every other month. Lisa either didn’t know or turned a blind eye. It wasn’t a perfect situation but she didn’t want to leave him; he could be so charming when he wanted to be. Friends had speculated that Eid could be quite manipulative with the woman in his life. He was a very strict father and liked to be the man of the house. Lisa certainly never stood up to him over his repeated affairs. But then, none of them lasted very long, that is until he changed jobs and started working as a dealer in a casino in Detroit in 2003, where he met Engle.
The Devil in the Red Dress Page 2