The Devil in the Red Dress

by Abigail Rieley

  The court is equipped with screens to allow younger witnesses to give evidence by video link, and the plain seating means that accused and witnesses share benches in absolute democracy. All these things give a slightly more relaxed feel to proceedings, less intimidating for the vulnerable. What the courtroom does not accommodate in any real or practical way are the hoards of witnesses needed in the average murder trial. All the eye witnesses and garda witnesses jostle for space with reporters sent to cover proceedings and the family of the victim, not to mention the accused and their family. When the trial is one where even the proposed victims are in attendance, space rapidly becomes limited. Eid sat next to the door with a prison guard sitting on either side. Past him sat Collins flanked now, as she was throughout the trial, by her sons Gary and David. Beyond Gary, sitting on the side closest to the windows, sat a few more gardaí, the senior detectives on the case. Then came the Howards, the victims of the appalling conspiracy, sitting beside the media advisor they had hired for the proceedings. They were surrounded by the reporters who had managed to fight their way to some seats. In the cramped surroundings the temperature was already rising rapidly as Justice Roderick Murphy took his seat.

  Justice Murphy was best known as a judge in the civil courts. His attention to detail and thoroughness there was well known, but in the criminal courts he was something of an unknown quantity. His somewhat cautious and careful speech was unusual in the brasher environs of the Central Criminal Court. The two defence teams sat and waited since it was O’Connell who once again took the floor to make the opening speech for the prosecution.

  In any criminal trial the format is the same. The prosecution opens the case and then calls witnesses. The defence have an opportunity to question witnesses as they see fit and have the option once the prosecution have finished putting their case, to call their own witnesses. After this both sides makes their closing arguments, with the prosecution once again going first. At all stages the accused are seen as innocent until such time as the jury feels the prosecution have proved their point and they decide to convict. Once the trial begins, everything is focused on the jury, everything must be explained so that the twelve men and women watching from the height of their jury box can understand the facts and the corresponding legal issues. It doesn’t matter what the press write or say, unless it reflects badly on the accused and is deemed to be capable of influencing a conviction. O’Connell explained all of this to the jury before moving on to the facts of the case. Once again he outlined the main facts but this time went into a lot more detail. He described the robbery of the Downes & Howard offices, the taking of the two computers, the digital clock and the (rapidly becoming famous) poster of old bank notes. He gave an account of Howard and Collins’s relationship, talked about the agreement not to marry and the impromptu ceremony in Sorrento before moving on the ‘reception’ party in Spanish Point and finally the proxy marriage certificate bought off the internet. The emails between Lyingeyes and Luciano were read through to give an accurate idea of the depths of the conspiracy before the jury.

  He highlighted the flirtatious tone, pointed out the reference to the devil in a red dress, ran through the main witnesses the jury could look forward to hearing from over the coming weeks. His speech went through the morning as the heat built in the small room, windows shut against the roar of traffic on the quays below. The reporters scribbled frantically in their notebooks while the accused in the story unfolding before the room sat stiff and still, staring straight ahead in the oppressive heat. By lunchtime he had just finished the emails recovered from the reception computer from Downes & Howard.

  When the judge sent the jury to their lunch everyone got stiffly to their feet. The room emptied quickly as people poured into the corridor outside, enjoying the fresh air and the ability to stretch their legs. The broadcast reporters ran off to file for the lunchtime news; everyone else wandered off to lunch, slightly dazed from a morning of being bombarded with information, and there was a lot more to come.

  After lunch the spectators gathered again, to be taken through the rest of the emails. Lined up against the back wall, squashed onto the only bench available for non legal people, the two accused sat uncomfortable close to their intended victims. Collins sat between her sons staring straight ahead at the judge. To her left, P.J. Howard sat, flanked by his two sons. They listened to the litany of evidence piling up against the woman who had been a good friend for so many years.

  The opening speech then moved into the terms of the contract, the cut price offer of $90,000 for three lives. Neither the co-conspirators nor their ‘marks’ betrayed a flicker of emotion as the reporters glanced back and forth between them, looking for some colour for their evening copy. The hours dragged on. The heat built up again in the airless room; it was confirmed that the air conditioning was not working. Still the opening speech wore on. Then some time after 3 p.m. with the end in sight, the opening speech took a turn into darker waters. O’Connell had reached the ricin evidence. He proceeded to describe the search of Eid’s cell in Limerick Prison and the finding of the contact lens case. The defence teams didn’t look happy. This was contentious evidence even at this stage. It would be a greater problem later on.

  O’Connell spent the rest of the day putting forward the prosecution case. It was an unusually long and detailed account of the evidence against the two accused but he explained that he wanted to give an impression of how strong a case the prosecution felt they had. The stories told by both accused were, he said, ‘confabulation and lies’. By the time he had finished the courtroom clock was showing close to 4 p.m. and the day’s proceedings were about to come to a close. The jury went home that night with an idea of what was to come. For Collins and Eid it must have been a daunting first day. There hadn’t been a single witness yet, but the following days papers would paint a damning picture indeed. It was going to be a long trial.

  The following day Robert Howard took briefly to the stand. It had been hoped that he, his brother and his father would finish their evidence in the first couple of days but in the end it would take several weeks to move past this initial account of ‘Luciano’s’ Irish debut. Robert would take the stand no less than three times and it would be the following month before his father had finished his evidence. Collins’s defence team would fight every aspect of the prosecution evidence, spurred on by her flurry of yellow Post It notes. She was going to fight this until the very end. Her future with Howard depended on it. Court 16 was still as hot and overcrowded as it had been for the opening speech. It was decided that one of the main courts on the ground floor would be better suited for the trial, which had already slowed to a snail’s pace as both defence teams began their fight. In those early days, the jury spent more time sitting in their room away from the arguments that raged in the courtroom. It was going to be a very contentious trial. The first week ended as would many more during the course of the trial, with the jury being sent home early to allow the barristers to argue over the latest bone of contention.

  The following week the court moved down to the Round Hall to one of the grand Gandon designed courtrooms. Space was no longer at a premium and the accused no longer had to sit on the same bench as their victims. Eid came in, laughing and chatting with the prison guards, and took his seat at the far end of the bench. Howard and his sons sat two rows behind the barristers, in the row usually occupied by victims and their families. Behind them the public galleries were full of reporters and gardaí, squeezed into the narrow wooden benches and craning forward to hear what was going on as the lawyers studiously ignored the microphones placed on their table to counteract the room’s less than perfect acoustics. Already at this early stage, one or two members of the public had wandered in to take a look at the latest trial to hit the headlines. They winkled themselves in among the throng in the public benches.

  On that first morning in the larger court, Collins and her sons also took their place in the public seats until the matter was brought to the judge�
�s attention by David Sutton, Eid’s senior barrister. He pointed out that it didn’t look the best for his client if he was the only one directly in the jury’s line of sight. It would seem that Collins was in some way less guilty, he argued. Collins ducked her head and muttered rapidly to her sons before looking imploringly towards her own legal team. Her own senior barrister, Paul O’Higgins took up the fight.

  The court was treated to a brief lesson on the lack of a place for the dock in the Irish legal system. It was up to his client where she wanted to sit, he pointed out. She was, after all, perfectly innocent. Sutton countered quickly that at least his client had no problem looking the jury in the eye. Justice Murphy frowned as he considered the situation carefully.

  ‘It might be fairer for everyone concerned if Ms Collins were to take her seat beside her co-accused so that both of them could face the jury in the full knowledge that they were innocent until a verdict was reached,’ he concluded.

  Collins reluctantly took her seat although it would be some time before the jury would again take theirs. The trial was to struggle on through several days of legal argument. Howard, Robert and Niall sat patiently in a row, waiting to be allowed to finish their evidence but they were only allowed to do so in fits and starts during the brief interludes when the jury were allowed into the courtroom. The rest of the time the arguments raged, while the Howards watched the barristers at their work. Collins sat facing them on the left. The place she had taken since that first day in the courtroom was level with the row where they sat, but she and Howard did not exchange glances. Collins’s attention was taken up by her Post It notes, passed with increasing regularity down the row to her legal team. Howard sat with his sons and stared straight ahead. It was not until he finally took the stand a second time that members of the public could see whose side he was on.

  P.J. Howard sat somewhat awkwardly in the witness box, looking down intently at O’Connell as he stood ready to question him. He was resistant to questioning from the off. Asked if he would count himself a wealthy man, with two luxury homes both mortgage free, Howard shook his head, refusing to agree that he was anything more than comfortable. He dismissed the proxy marriage certificate out of hand. He had known about it before the gardaí showed it to him, he said. The knowledge might have slipped his mind in the face of all their questions but Collins had thoughtfully rung him and pointed out that, yes, he had known about it for several months before they asked him. It would never have worked anyway, he said, his solicitor was well aware they had agreed not to marry.

  The marriage certificate would have been completely useless and anyway, what would Collins have wanted with it, he stated noting that Collins had been absolutely fine about it when he had told her that any marriage between them would affect his children’s assets.

  His voice became more definite as he warmed to his subject. Collins was not a greedy person, she never had been, he said.

  ‘In the eight years I have known Sharon she has never asked for anything. I have often offered her things and she has said no. If she’s given three or four hundred euros for herself, she would see her two lads had enough. She would spend it on clothes and not save it. She is far from a greedy person,’ he said.

  He frowned as he announced to the court in general that he found it ‘very, very, very hard to believe’ that Collins would ever do anything like this against him.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense to me at all; it’s totally out of character.’ This was why, he explained, he had sent her to Las Vegas to find a private detective to track down Marconi. Of course he believed her story, he said, she would never lie to him.

  Had the private eye found anyone, O’Connell asked. Howard didn’t miss a beat. He had a list, he said, a list of possible leads. He agreed that his credit card had been used to pay for Eid and Engle to fly to Ireland and stay in the Two Mile Inn. He also agreed that Collins kept his credit card details in her purse, because she was so much better at finding her way around the whole internet banking thing. It was easier to leave it to her to pay it online each month, he added. Her purse had been stolen before those flights were booked, and as far as he was concerned, she was in Spain at the time and had told him at the beginning of that September that her purse had been stolen.

  ‘I have a strong reason to believe that Teresa Engle took that purse. She was there at the time. She was in Fuengirola staying in a particular hotel. She was supposed to be staying there for a few days and she disappeared I think after about one day. People said various things about why she was there,’ he said.

  He refused to accept any of the charges levelled against Collins and, when he was finally allowed to leave the witness box, he stopped by her, leaned down towards her, tenderly took her face in his hands and kissed her. He then whispered into her ear before walking out of the courtroom and out of the trial. The kiss remained one of the most talked about points in an extraordinary trial, sealing Collins’s reputation as a femme fatale and Howard’s as an honourable man who was standing by his partner because he didn’t believe the allegations against her.

  After the excitement of the kiss, things settled back down to the bad tempered norm. There seemed to be a problem with each piece of evidence the prosecution wanted to introduce and the battles would continue for hours in front of the benevolent adjudication of Justice Murphy. But no matter how strongly other points were argued the fiercest battle would come over the American evidence.

  Engle was always going to be a controversial witness but with her testimony about the ricin cookery class and the plot to kill the Howards, she was vital to the prosecution case. Her evidence of making ricin with Eid gave the finding of the trace sample in Eid’s cell a chronology it was otherwise lacking. As the barristers argued, she sat quietly in the public gallery, accompanied always by a female garda, since she was on bail. As well as her plea bargain she had also managed to obtain a letter from the Irish authorities saying that she had full immunity from prosecution. As the days dragged on in legal argument her nerves became ever more apparent. Eid was noticeably aware of her presence, knowing exactly what was coming if she took the stand. Every now and then, when there was a lull in proceedings, he would glance over but their eyes never met. At lunchtimes, when he had been taken back to his cell she would walk to a pub close to the court’s complex, to push her food around her plate and frequently leave the table to smoke yet another cigarette. When she finally took the stand after almost a week of arguing about whether her testimony could be trusted or was admissable, it was to a packed courtroom. Everyone knew that after P.J. Howard, this was the main event, the most damning witness in the prosecution’s arsenal.

  Engle took to the witness box with a great show of humility. She hardly glanced at her former lover, all her attention focused on O’Connell as he gently led her through her evidence. She had put on weight since her arrest in Ennis, a sign to the gardaí that she was recovering from her virtual imprisonment by the poker dealer. Her voice was soft but sure as she calmly laid out every piece of incriminating evidence against Collins and Eid. She told how Eid had set up the hitmanforhire.net website, how she had not been involved with the site herself but had read all the emails from Collins. She had heard her speak on the phone as well. She said she could hear a strong Irish accent but no words; she knew that Eid had trouble understanding her and had to ask her to repeat herself, a fact born out by the emails. When she turned her attention to the ricin, the whole court leaned forward to hear. It wasn’t often you heard the story of how someone had cooked up a biological weapon in their own house. Engle told the story well, her voice level as she explained that Eid had got the recipe from the internet. She said they had bought the castor beans and acetone online, and wore masks and gloves when making it. They used a blender and a coffee filter to make the toxin and had ended up with enough to fit in the contact lens holder. She described her trip to Ireland, how it had been with the intention to kill the two Howard brothers, Robert and Niall. The plan had always been to kill
, she said. It wasn’t just a con—those men were to die. Her voice shook with emotion as she told the courtroom at large, ‘I am so very ashamed that I was involved in any of this.’

  She insisted, however, that she had at all times been under Eid’s complete control. By the time she had finished her evidence the outlook was bleak for both the accused. Then Paul O’Higgins stood up to start the cross exam-ination on behalf of Collins. He pointed out that Engle was giving evidence under the shadow of her plea bargain under American law. Under the terms of the plea bargain, she had promised to give evidence. Surely, O’Higgins pressed, this meant that she was eager to please her new masters. If she didn’t manage to impress them, and there were several FBI agents connected with the American investigation sitting in court watching her give evidence, there was no guarantee she would get the light sentence she was looking for, he stated. He held up as proof the fact that her sentencing had been adjourned until after she had given evidence in Ireland. Engle shook her head emphatically. She was only telling the truth. She said she had nothing to gain by telling lies. The American sentence was only adjourned so she could spend more time with her family before the inevitable jail time. O’Higgins was not impressed. She wasn’t the shrinking violet she pretended to be, he told Engle. Had Eid been there when she told Joshua Hammond that he would be watching Lauryn Royston’s burial if they didn’t find the money she was demanding from them? he asked.