The Devil in the Red Dress

by Abigail Rieley

  But Nevin wasn’t Collins’s only friend. Not content with paying his respects, P.J. Howard continued to try and clear her name. He hired numerous private detectives, to search for Marconi, Collins’s elusive writing teacher and alibi.

  P.J. Howard wasn’t deterred. He clung to the idea that Collins was still the innocent women he had courted so passionately a decade ago. He had no hidden agenda, he said, ‘other than the fact I would like to see Sharon free.’

  Many court observers wondered why he was remaining loyal to Collins, sticking with such a duplicitous femme fatale, but P.J. Howard was determined. Throughout the summer his faith in her never weakened and speculation started to mount that he would himself take the stand in her defence when the sentencing finally came round. From her cell in the Dochas Centre, Collins took hope from both P.J. Howard’s faith and in her own chances of a successful appeal. By the time the courts were back in session and it was time to once again go to the Four Courts to learn when her sentence would finally be handed down, she was upbeat.

  The prison food might have hung a few more pounds on her previously skinny frame and her hair suffered from the lack of a regular cut and blow dry but Collins was in high spirits as she sat in her old familiar haunt under the stairs on Wednesday, 8 October, in the first week of the new court year. As she waited once again for her sons to arrive to join her in court, she chatted animatedly to the prison officer who stood at her side. It was almost an end to waiting and Collins was her usual bubbly, expressive self. Her hands fluttered in front of her chest as she talked, punctuating her words. Her faith in her own innocence was as strong as ever as she asked for an analysis of her trial. She was still having difficulty believing that the jury could have thought she was guilty but she presented herself with her head held high and her best foot forward. She greeted her son David with a dazzling smile, which was also turned towards her legal team as they went into a last minute huddle outside the courts. Her appearance was a mere formality. The real tension wouldn’t hit until a month later.

  Her co-accused was in equally good form. As always on his court appearances, Eid was laughing and joking with the prison guards, greeting them as old friends after a long absence. He had been in prison for over two years by now and any sentence he finally received would begin with that time taken off it. There was even speculation that he would have served his entire sentence if a sufficiently lenient jail term was handed down. But this court appearance was a brief affair, although as with any appearance of Lying Eyes and the man who had introduced himself as Tony Luciano, the media had turned out in force.

  In court the defence teams were told that the long awaited sentences would be handed down in a month, on Monday, 3 November.

  When that day finally dawned there was a heightened sense of anticipation. There had been feverish speculation over the weekend that P.J. Howard would be attending to hear his partner’s fate. Court Two filled up early that morning as the interest levels peaked. Long before proceedings were due to start the public benches were being filled by the sombre suited figures of the barristers who did not have a prior engagement. The public posse was out in droves as well. Gathering early to secure a decent view they huddled in their seats and the regulars waved to each other like old friends before settling in for the main event. The press, of course, were out in force, for this was an end to one of the biggest stories of the year. For once, neither accused was anywhere to be seen.

  Robert and Niall Howard had settled themselves on a bench outside the courtroom before entering. Many of those assembled felt for the two men. They had been dragged into a mess that was not of their own making. They were innocent victims of a ruthless extortionist and Collins. Finally Collins’s supporters marched into view. Her two sons walked in flanking the tiny frail figure of their grandmother, Bernadette, Collins’s mother, who had been absent for much of the trial but was now here to support her daughter. They were also accompanied by their father Noel.

  When the family party reached the courtroom it was to find Collins already in place, a female prison officer in the spot where one of her sons would have been before her conviction. She had lost the extra pounds that had caused much comment at her appearance a month previously and her hair was neatly styled. The black trouser suit was back with a mauve blouse just visible under the jacket. Her face was free of makeup and she looked serious as she greeted her mother and her sons. As the family took their seats, the prison officer kept her place, a human buffer to remind those gathered of the changed circumstances.

  Eid for once was last to take his place. Dressed now for a cold Irish autumn, he wore a brown jumper with thin horizontal stripes under which, in accidental co-ordination with his co-accused, he wore a lilac shirt. Gone were the jeans in honour of the seriousness of the occasion and for once he too wore a black suit. But apart from the change in outfit his demeanour had not changed, and he smiled at familiar faces as he waited along with the rest for the trial to begin.

  Suddenly a ripple of excitement went round the room. P.J. Howard had been seen crossing the Round Hall. He came in clutching a brown manila folder accompanied by a solicitor. The news slowly crept through the press benches that he had arrived with his own legal team and was intending to make a plea for clemency for the woman he had never stopped believing in. However, the Prosecution was unhappy. Prosecuting counsel Tom O’Connell told Justice Murphy that what P.J. Howard had prepared wasn’t so much a victim impact statement, which as a victim he was fully entitled to give, but more a character reference more suited for the defence.

  It was against this backdrop that the court began hearing more evidence. Superintendent John Scanlan took the stand to run through the familiar facts and informed the court that neither of the accused had ever come to the attention of the law before. O’Connell then outlined the sentences that had been imposed on similar cases in the past. The legislation had not been changed since the 19th Century, he said, and similar cases were few on the ground, but a sample of those that had passed through the courts in recent years tended to receive sentences around the seven year mark out of a maximum of ten. O’Connell pointed out that unlike the cases he had mentioned, Collins had aimed to kill three people and so should be looking at consecutive terms for each.

  Then, underlining the way a victim impact statement would more normally sound, O’Connell read from a prepared statement from P.J. Howard’s sons Robert and Niall. It was a brief document but direct. They had not suffered any loss of earning or physical injuries, they had written, but their lives were changed for ever.

  ‘The incident has caused significant changes in our lives. The notion that we were made the subject of a contract to kill has affected us socially and emotionally. The degree of planning and the nature of the contract and the person by whom the contract was initiated, particularly in light of her relationship with our father, has exasperated the situation for us. As the injured parties we have become more self conscious and are now constantly looking over our shoulders and are ill at ease. The crime has impacted on our respective social and business lives. We are not as confident as we were and we feel that the respect that had existed among our peers in our business dealings is not the same as it used to be. Furthermore we believe the incident has weakened the quality of our relationship with our father.’

  They summed up their situation for the Court.

  ‘We cannot understand how we were propelled from our normal daily lives into such a national drama and shudder at the realisation that had the plan been effected we could have been poisoned to death. We believe it will take a long time, if at all, before we can put the incident behind us.’

  So the sentence hearing crawled into the afternoon and still P.J. Howard had not taken the stand. The public gallery was full when the judge returned at 2.15 p.m. that afternoon. The numbers had swelled since the morning as the lunchtime news had announced the possibility of yet another twist in an extraordinary tale. Finally P.J. Howard was allowed to get up and say his piece,
but with the proviso that he would simply read his statement and not stray into defence territory through cross examination. In a voice trembling with emotion, clutching the paper of the statement and a bottle of water, P.J. Howard made his plea. First he criticised the gardaí before turning his attention to the subject of the infamous Gerry Ryan letter.

  ‘I would like to take this opportunity to refute the allegations made against me in the Court case and I wish to deny any and all of the allegations. I have never seen nor was I told by the Gardaí about an email that was supposedly sent to the Gerry Ryan Show,’ he said.

  Honour and reputation defended he turned his attention to the main purpose of his appearance.

  ‘I have known Sharon Collins for approximately 9 years. During that time she had made a good home for us all and we were extremely happy together and got on very well. Sharon has a very positive outlook on life and she was very loving and giving of her time to our extended families. Sharon always kept an even keel and I have never known her to do anything drastic over those years. She is a very straightforward and honest person and if she wanted anything she would ask.

  ‘Sharon is in my opinion one of the nicest people you could ever have been fortunate to know. She is a caring, loving and decent lady,’ he said.

  Collins cried as he spoke, extolling her virtues. He wanted the woman he loved to avoid jail and spread his cards on the table with a claim that raised eyebrows around the Court.

  ‘I will not give up on Sharon and would have no hesitation whatsoever in living with her again.’

  He had never been afraid of Collins, he said, and did not feel she would ever be a threat to his sons. Then, just as Collins had written to the Director of Public Prosecution, he made his own plea for the casualties who would form the collateral damage of the trial. Her mother and her sons had suffered enough since her conviction and he himself was feeling the strain.

  ‘This is an extremely stressful situation for me and the prospect of Sharon being in prison for a long time is adding to this stress. Sharon has for many years overseen the dispensing of my medication and has been of great assistance to me in this regard. I have had no fear and still have no fear of her doing this,’ he said.

  Collins stared up at him and he had the court room’s rapt attention as he finished his plea.

  ‘In the circumstances I would urge the Court to take into account that Sharon has never been before the Courts in these circumstances previously and it is my view that she will never so appear again. I am urging the Court not to impose a custodial sentence.’

  In a brief cross examination by O’Connell, P.J. Howard criticised what he perceived to be an attempt by the authorities to leave him, as Collins’s supporter, out in the cold. He told Justice Murphy that the gardaí had never asked him to produce a statement and he had only found out his sons were doing so when they told him themselves. He said that he had ‘waited and waited’ before taking the decision to hire his own counsel. He got down out of the witness stand as Detective Sergeant Michael Moloney headed towards it to answer the allegations.

  In an extraordinary display of frayed temper, P.J. Howard’s animosity towards the gardaí was clear as he leaned his face toward DS Moloney and muttered through gritted teeth ‘don’t lie’ before taking his seat.

  DS Moloney, who was a very respected officer, was adamant though that Howard had been well aware he had the right to submit a statement and said that the matter had even been mentioned in passing, although he himself could not recall specifically inviting Howard to contribute. As DS Moloney gave his evidence, P.J. Howard could be seen shaking his head angrily.

  P.J. Howard wasn’t the only voice to wade in on Collins’s behalf. Once her defence counsel stood up to put forward the mitigating factors, there was a litany of praise for the woman now known as ‘the Devil in the Red Dress’.

  Her former husband, Noel Collins, took the stand to paint a favourable picture of his ex-wife. Collins lived for her sons, he told the Court, and had never forced him to stick to the visiting times set down in their separation agreement. He could see his family whenever he wanted and she had never been anything other than a brilliant mother. He spoke of her dedication to her elderly mother and described Bernadette Coote’s decline since her daughter’s incarceration. She had once been the life and soul of the party, he said, a lady who liked to dance, but all that had left her under the weight of the embarrassment and public scrutiny. The whole affair had had a ‘massive effect’ on the family he said, ‘friends, family, you just cast the net out.’ As he went back to the body of the Court he crossed to where P.J. Howard was sitting, stopping to shake his hand in solidarity.

  The Mayor of Ennis and the Bishop of Killaloe added their combined weight to the argument. Peter Considine, the Mayor, admitted he did not know Collins but was an old acquaintance of her mother. He argued that Bernadette Coote had been a particular victim of the affair. She now had to be brought to the supermarket late at night to avoid the hungry stares of the gossips. Even collecting her pension had become an obstacle course as she tried to avoid other customers in the Post Office, not going in if it was busy. Her health had deteriorated drastically and he echoed Noel Collins in his assessment that Mrs Coote was a mere shadow of her former self. Bishop Willie Walsh described Collins as ‘an open, truthful, caring person’ who deserved the mercy of the Court.

  Consultant psychologist Brian Glanville, who had visited Collins on two occasions in the Dochas Centre, told the Court he had conducted psychometric personality tests on her and found Collins to have ‘a passive, detached but dependent personality’. This could lead to conflicts in relationships, he said, making her feel trapped even while she craved security. He said that Collins had felt isolated in prison. She did not have much in common with her fellow inmates and didn’t like the media spotlight that had been trained on her since the trial began. Collins felt that she was constantly being watched and the press scrutiny encouraged others to invade her privacy and eavesdrop on intimate conversations that then found their way into the next day’s papers.

  Several other family friends added their views to the pot, agreeing that Collins was a model mother and a lovely person. Even the chaplain and assistant governor of Mountjoy Women’s prison had been asked to provide reports. Prisoner 46671 was ‘a good worker’ and ‘a model prisoner’ they said in efficiently brief reports. Collins’s defence barrister, Paul O’Higgins, put forward a strong body of support for his client who sat closer to Eid than she ever had done during her trial, her face pink and blotchy as her fate came ever closer.

  Now it was the turn of Eid’s defence team to make their stand but there was no-one waiting in the wings to sing the praises of the poker dealer. He had lost everything, David Sutton told the judge. His house was gone; his job lost forever; even both his wives had jumped ship. Sutton painted the picture of a lonely, broken man, at odds with the outwardly relaxed figure who had appeared to doze as the evidence was run through one last time. Just turned 53, Eid was not in good health. He had suffered heart attacks in the past and had a pace-maker which needed medical supervision. He also suffered from non-insulin dependent diabetes that again required careful monitoring. Sutton described a man far away from home who spent most of his time in his solitary cell, playing solitaire with the cards that had once held full houses. Once again Eid was playing second fiddle in the Irish courts, his defence was brief and bar a couple of medical reports there were no voices raised in his support.

  Eventually at almost four o’clock, all the facts had been laid out and the best foot put forward by the two defence teams. Justice Murphy rose to briefly consider his sentence while the court hummed in muted speculation. Finally it was time for Collins to stand to hear her fate. She stood facing the bench, one hand nervously playing with the middle button of her jacket, which she held protectively closed over her stomach. There was barely a flicker of emotion as she learnt that she would be spending the next six years in jail but at least she had been spare
d the threat of a consecutive sentence, all six of her convictions would be served out simultaneously. She sat down heavily and was hugged, once again, by younger son David.

  Then it was the turn of Eid. The poker dealer wasn’t smiling as he stood up to learn his punishment. The maximum sentence for extortion was fourteen years and he had already heard that his demands with a threat of death were considered serious by the Court. The DPP withdrew the three charges of conspiracy to murder against him, pronouncing the three nolle prosequi, but he could still come out with a higher sentence than the ‘devil in the red dress’. In the end there was a parity of sorts as Eid was also handed a six year sentence. He also received a year each for the two charges of handling stolen goods from the robbery at Downes & Howard but all three of his sentences were to run side by side, meaning that, when the time he had served was taken into account, his sentence was far less than the one Collins was now contemplating.

  The judge got up to leave and the Court rose with him, emptying quickly now the end was known. The press poured into the Round Hall to separate and chase the various different reactions. Supt Scanlan led the posse first to the front gates of the Four Courts. He thanked his men and those that had helped from the US and Spain. He asked the press to respect the privacy of those who would have to come to terms with the fall out of the plot. Thankfully no one had lost their lives but it had been hard on all.

  Then eventually it was Collins’s solicitor again. Eugene O’Kelly spoke to the press as he had done after the verdict but this time he was alone. He said that Collins was grateful to P.J. Howard for his support.

  ‘Ms Collins has been convicted by the jury and sentenced but most importantly she has been acquitted by her partner Mr Howard. She takes great comfort in the support that Mr Howard is showing and she has asked that I would apologise on her behalf for the great hurt and embarrassment and distress that has been caused to him by the use by the State of an incomplete letter which was taken out of context,’ he said.