‘For guys I would say they will go to their usual place at the weekend—like I told you before. Usually they go on Friday afternoon or evening.
The hotel you mention is very close to the apartment but we may not be there. He plans to travel. Will know closer to the time.
I will try ringing you on that number it would be easier for me if we could talk.’
And talk they did—Collins called him a total of eleven times that day, the longest conversation lasting almost ten minutes. On the 25th they spoke again, Collins was determined to hammer out every last detail of the plot. The next day she was back at the keyboard. Whether Collins was panicking or trying to ensure that nothing would go wrong is unknown, but the emails suggest she was afraid of something going wrong. The Mexican marriage certificate was bothering her again.
‘Hi Tony,
As I said to you last night—my husband must be first. If not, well there isn’t much point at all in any of this and also I would have a lot of trouble getting my hands on the cash. The manner in which I got married would be questionable and I could find myself with absolutely nothing. I can’t explain any further right now but believe me; the two boys must be first. So it will be back to the drawing board.
Are you sure your woman can’t approach them in the bar as we discussed last night? I don’t think it would be too hard to offer to buy them a drink and tell them that she knows their father.
It’s believable—she met my husband in a night club in Spain. They were friendly for a while and he brought her boating and entertained her with drinks and meals out etc. She knows where he is from in Ireland and that he has a holiday home in Kilkee that his sons use most weekends. She sees the sons and thinks they must be his sons, as they look so much like him, especially the younger and smaller one. She would like to treat them to a drink and tells them to say hello to him for her when they next see him. They never get a chance to do that.
That would work, I think. She doesn’t need to be with them for long as she can say she is with friends and must go. Then if you like, you could wait until we come home from Spain and see my husband then.
Just one other thing, do the guys have to be together? Could you do what you planned to one and maybe something else to the other?
I will try to ring you in a little while—but I know you don’t always understand what I am saying and now my voice is going and it may be difficult to hear me. I’ve been having asthmatic attacks all week. I haven’t suffered for years, but the stress of the situation is killing me. At this stage I feel like jumping from the apartment myself. Honestly I really need to get this done as soon as possible. I can’t endure what it’s doing to me. And I am terrified!
We are going back to the apartment tomorrow. Probably will be there around 9 p.m. but not sure what time yet. My son is meeting people he met so hopefully he won’t be around.
Just one more thing—it will be obvious that someone deliberately wants the guys gone, won’t it? Is there any way to avoid this? Maybe I am asking the impossible. If it’s any good to you—they are probably in the bar right now.
And Tony, the computer in the office – it must go. That’s vital. Just throw it in the sea or something.
Now about the money—to clarify:
What I was saying is that I always knew that I only had a total of 80k approximately to spend, including the 15k that I sent.
I propose paying it like this: Full Price $100,000 less amount paid 15,000 (we will say equal to dollars) = $85,000. Less money in safe 11,000 (again we will say equal to dollars.
Balance to pay afterward $74,000 US dollars. I will get the money changed into dollars somewhere before I pay you.
Does this clarify what I have? There just is not anymore cash there—unless I find some that I don’t know about, and if I do it’s yours. Are you satisfied with this? I sincerely hope so.
Talk to you soon,
Sharon.’
A few hours later she sent another email. Collins was now consumed by what she was doing. It took over her every thought. She wanted the murders to happen, so she could get on with her life. This is perhaps why she could not stop issuing instructions by email and snatched phone calls.
‘You can get an Aer Lingus flight out of Cork Airport every morning at around 7 a.m. If you could get to the guys today or tonight you or your guy—or both of you—could be on tomorrow morning’s flight and everything could be done by tomorrow. Too ambitious?
Talk soon,
Sharon.’
An hour later she rang him again before deciding it was better to put her thoughts in writing.
‘To Tony,
Just a fast email—I will ring you later if possible. I wonder if you had the right house for the guys. It’s a grey terraced house, [house number given] I think. There’s a row of houses and it’s the second last one on the right. Not a big fancy house, very ordinary.
About my husband—I really want it to look like suicide or natural causes. Will you think again about jumping from the window? I think that it would be a very believable thing for a man to do if he heard that his only two sons were dead—and it would be easy for you if there are two of you. You could be in his bedroom when he goes in, curtains closed and window open behind the curtains. Grab him by each arm and just throw him out very fast. Fourteen floors to fall should definitely do it. But if you have any better idea go ahead, just as long as it doesn’t look like anyone else was involved. Also he would not be the kind of guy who would slash his wrists. Too much like a woman’s thing to do!
Anyway will try to ring you later from the ladies restroom.
Sharon.’
But their plans were not going to go as smoothly as Collins had hoped. The so-called hitman she was placing all her hope in was not as smooth an operator as he made out.
CHAPTER 9:
FROM VEGAS TO ENNIS
The plot was in place—all that was needed now was some kind of action. Eid had booked the flight for Teresa Engle to fly to Shannon from Atlanta on 28 August. She would be staying in the Queen’s Hotel in the centre of Ennis. Despite attempts to inveigle Private Buckley, who had no idea of the events that were unfolding, to come along for the ride after ‘John Smith’ too had faded into the background, Eid approached his friend Ashraf Gharbeiah to go along as the second person and booked him onto a flight a day after Engle. What was to happen in Ennis in the last days of August 2006 was either an abortive attempt to take this heist to the next level or the hapless criminals taking their preparation to levels that would make a method actor quake.
Whatever the reasoning behind it, Engle was on the plane that flew into Shannon on 29 August and booked into the Queens Hotel. Using the hotel as a base she started testing out the directions in Collins’s emails. Collins was under the impression that the hit was about to take place after her flurry of emails from Spain but Engle did no more than look on this occasion, scoping and planning and fixing each location on the list. She would later insist in court, where she had been granted immunity from prosecution and was waiting to be sentenced for her part in the Royston sting, that her purpose in Ireland was to facilitate the real evil doer—Ashraf Gharbeiah who was due in the country to dispatch the Howard brothers. Gharbeiah on the other hand would tell a completely different story to the detectives who called him to get to the bottom of the Irish trip.
Whatever reason Engle travelled to Ireland, either a summer assassination or a simple recce mission for the con that was to come, she set off on that warm August evening along the broad, straight road out of town. Just as Collins had described she passed the shop called Coote and soon came to the car dealers. She walked past the shops and offices that made up the business park looking for Unit 7a. Downes & Howard was yet another anonymous building in the concrete expanse. She spent some time familiarising herself with the layout of the business park before heading back towards Ennis town.
Meanwhile in Spain, Collins was getting worried about whether or not things were going according to
plan. She wrote to ‘Luciano’ again after another brief phone call.
‘Hi Tony,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’ll stop fretting about how to get the money to you. We’ll figure that out when we get to it.’
The following day Gharbeiah flew to Ireland. He and Engle met up and this is where the narrative splits into two different accounts. Engle’s version involved her meeting him at the Queens Hotel once he arrived. Once again, she went for a walk around the town but this time she had company. It was a pleasant, late summer evening as they walked the narrow streets. Engle brought him along the road out of the town centre to the business park where they reconnoitred the town. According to Engle, Gharbeiah had arrived in Ireland with a rattling bag of medicines that could be combined in particular ways to cause heart failure in an unsuspecting victim. He had access to a wide variety of drugs in his work as an emergency medical technician and certainly, the Foxglove compound Ouabain, which can be used to treat irregular heart beats and can have the opposite affect if mis-administered, had been discussed through hitmanforhire.net when ‘John Smith’ was still touting for work. Engle was adamant that harm was due to be done to the Howard brothers on this first visit but equally adamant that whatever the plan was she did not know anything about it. Her role in all of this was to be the scout she said. Yet there was an email from ‘Luciano’ on 28 August to Private Buckley, sent the day before she arrived in Ireland, asking for assistance.
‘Hello Brian. Please help us out for this. I need some strong poison. One of us will be there at Shannon 7.20 coming from the States and we can’t ship this stuff for security reasons, you know that. So please help us out. We will pay and I will owe you favourite. Thanks Brother.
Tony.’
According to Engle’s story Gharbeiah intended to spike some wine or ‘liquor’ and accordingly they paid a visit to the local supermarket and stocked up. But they did not wait another day and take the trip to Kilkee for the weekend, where they had a fair idea from Collins’s comprehensive emails where to find the two Howard brothers. Instead, according to Engle’s version of events, Gharbeiah got cold feet and pulled out of the plan before heading back to the States the following day.
Gharbeiah, on the other hand, told a rather different story. He agreed that his old friend Eid approached him at the end of August and asked him to take a trip to Ireland to help Engle dispose of the Howard brothers. He said Eid was very confident of his latest squeeze’s homicidal capabilities, and explained this was why he hadn’t bothered going himself. He did, however, mention that the job was going to be very well paid. At the time Gharbeiah was going through a particularly messy divorce, so he decided to tag along. He insisted his motives were perfectly pure though. He simply wanted to persuade Engle not to carry out the killings. His friend bought the tickets and he found himself flying from Chicago to Shannon. Once he touched down he headed straight to Engle’s hotel. They met in the bar of the Queen’s Hotel.
Over the next hour and a half, he said he set to work persuading her to allow Robert and Niall Howard to continue living their lives. He described a very different creature to the mousey woman who gave evidence in court; the woman gardaí said was a shadow of herself when she was arrested in Ireland on her second visit. Gharbeiah described a loud, brash woman with the morals of an alley cat. He described that meeting in the bar of the Queen’s Hotel as having an eerie quality. He felt he was in the presence of someone who had no respect for human life. He found her vulgar and ethically ‘not right’. He said he was reminded of the strange request from Eid earlier that year when Eid had said Engle wanted the unfortunate Todd Engle killed.
This latest development showed too much of a predilection for violence for his taste. She never told him how she planned to kill the Howard boys, he told the FBI, and she never showed him a weapon but he was satisfied she intended to carry out the job. She even nonchalantly mentioned the pay packet at the end of it. After an hour and a half Gharbeiah felt convinced that he had in fact managed to save the brothers’ lives. He went and had dinner before returning to the bar where he stayed for the rest of the night. In Gharbeiah’s account there are no trips to Westgate Business Park or liquor runs to the supermarket. The only two elements that coincide in both accounts are Gharbeiah’s arrival and departure dates. As described by Engle he flew back to Chicago on 1 September while she stayed on. She had also been booked on a flight back to the States on the first day of September but she had more work to do in Ireland.
On Friday, 1 September, Collins emailed ‘Luciano’ again with the news that would send Engle on a whistle stop trip to Fuengirola.
‘Hi Tony,
Very little time here. I will leave the keys at the hotel. I will pay your people myself because a friend of ours—an elderly man here—has given my husband money to mind for him and I want to keep it safe for him. He’s a very good friend—you understand? I can meet them the following day or maybe after they have done it.
There is no landline in the apartment. We plan to stay on the boat tonight and I hope to bring my son with me so, in this way, no one will be at the apartment tonight and they can look around.
My husband would know a BB gun immediately —he is a gun dealer himself and very familiar. If I get the chance I will get one, but to get the chance will be difficult. They will be able to buy one with no difficulty in the shops in the Las Palmeras complex around the apartment block.
The guys told me that they are going to Kilkee, so hopefully everything will be ok there.
Talk soon.’
‘Luciano’ got back to her as soon as possible to update her and to convince her the job would be carried out.
‘Hello Sharon. Here’s the deal. Please don’t call me a lot. We will call you when the job is done. We can’t find the guys at all so we gonna do it at their office. Sorry it take more time than we thought but the job will be done, just relax. We will let you know as soon as we done it.
We change out reservation at the hotel in Malaga to El Puerto, Costa del Sol. I don’t know how it is but we don’t care. Other hotel we will stay at Clare Inn, Newmarket on Fergus, Dromoland in Ireland. I don’t know how far from the office but we don’t care either. Just let you know where we stay at.
After the job done like we agree that we gonna get pay. Max the 3rd Sept. I will let you know where and how. €11,000 and $47,000 USD. If we need info we will call you. Just relax yourself and let us do our job.
Thanks,
Tony’
More than anything, Collins wanted the conspiracy to conclude. She could not help but issue instruction after instruction. She quickly wrote back with more ‘helpful’ information.
‘You can get an Aer Lingus flight out of Cork airport every morning at around 7 a.m. If you could get to the guys today or tonight you or your guy—or both of you—could be on tomorrow morning’s flight and everything could be done by tomorrow.
Too ambitious?
Talk soon.
Sharon.’
So Engle went to Spain. She did not visit Kilkee before she left Clare. Her one encounter with P.J. Howard’s sons would not take place until the end of September when the web of intrigue finally melted away. She took a Ryanair flight from Shannon Airport, unimpressed by the no frills approach calling it a ‘small airline’.
When she arrived in Fuengirola the keys to Howard’s penthouse apartment were waiting for her at the front desk of the hotel. The envelope they were in had her name on it. She took the keys but did not go up to the apartment. The hot sun was making her feel dizzy and there was always the risk that Collins hadn’t managed to empty the apartment. The hotel complex was bright and noisy, the sky impossibly blue, and the street vendors loud and chattering. The scores of holiday makers who had come for an August of sun, sand and sangria were underfoot and beetroot red, thronging the beachfront and infesting the dun coloured sand leading down to the azure sea. Everywhere she looked there were British and Irish pubs. The stalls around the hotel compl
ex sold a mixture of cheap Spanish tat and ridiculously over priced designer baubles. In some ways, it was a little like home.
She travelled out to the marina to try and find the boat even though the information she had from the hitmanforhire.net emails suggested that the boat would be rather full this evening but despite wandering around the port for a while she couldn’t find Howard’s boat. She checked in with Las Vegas and reported that the ‘Heartbeat’ could not be found. It was not proving to be a very productive trip. There was one last thing to check before heading back to Fuengirola. Collins had mentioned, in her many phone calls to Eid, that when she was on the boat it was possible to email from a nearby internet café. Engle verified its existence before she headed back to the hotel.
Back in Fuengirola she positioned herself at a table outside a café facing the apartment. She bought herself a cool drink and kept an eye on the tower looking for a familiar face from the photographs that had been sent to ‘Luciano’. Then the unexpected happened. She developed a headache and began to feel sick and increasingly uneasy. She squinted over at the apartment, the keys heavy in her pocket but could not bring herself to get up and walk the small distance to the tower that housed the apartment. Whether it was jet lag, food poisoning or nerves, the full weight of what they had planned came crashing down on her. She didn’t want to go into a stranger’s apartment and poke around his things. What was the point? She got up and went back to her hotel, lying for a while in her air conditioned room before packing up her things and booking out.
The Devil in the Red Dress Page 11