The Devil in the Red Dress

by Abigail Rieley

  The girl behind the counter looked at them and then took them off to photocopy the certificates. Collins waited for her to say something about the marriage certificate but she nodded and gave her a receipt. They accepted it. It had worked! They would be sending her out a new passport with her married name in a couple of days. Now no matter what Howard and his sons thought, she was officially Sharon Howard. Now what could she do with that?

  CHAPTER 5:

  A HITMAN FOR HIRE?

  It wasn’t long before the new passport felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket. Collins had big plans now that she had a marriage certificate and a passport proving that she was Mrs P.J. Howard. So she hit the internet again some months after her ‘marriage’ looking for a way of disposing of any prying eyes who could put an end to her little game of make believe.

  Towards the end of June 2006 the solution she hit upon was like it was straight out of a Cohen brothers’ film. The idea that it was possible to order someone’s murder from the comfort of your home, in perfect anonymity from start to finish, ensured that the proceedings in Court Number Two became the must-see entertainment for those who consider trial-watching a fun day out. But Collins wasn’t considering getting caught when the idea came to her as she sat at the computer in Downes & Howard in August 2006. She knew you could get almost anything online. Why not this? It was quick, it was easy and, as long as she was careful, it was safe. It was the only way to go! Of course this time she couldn’t simply use Howard’s forgotten Eircom account. It wouldn’t look very good if Howard were to order his own death—and also since the boys would need to be disposed of as well. No, there was no way she could use one of the Eircom accounts for this. This was something that needed a rather more impenetrable pseudonym. A web-based account would be best. Untraceable—or so she thought. So on 2 August she visited the web portal of Yahoo and signed up to it’s free web mail service. Emboldened by the perceived anonymity she signed up as B. Lyons, the name of Howard’s former partner, now deceased. Well, it wasn’t as if Howard was going to see the emails so he wouldn’t be put in a position to feel embarrassed or betrayed if she found what she was looking for. Now she needed an email address; something that suited her new role as a femme fatale. The old Eagles song kept weaving around her head.

  ‘Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things

  You’re still the same old girl you used to be

  You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes.’

  It was enough to make you cry. Well she wasn’t going to be a victim. She had given up everything for him and for what? What if she had turned him down in 1998? What would her life be like now? Yahoo silently waited for a user name for her new account, an email address that suited the task in hand. There was only one choice really. The office was lunchtime quiet as she finally typed in the name Lyingeyes98. Done. She fiddled around for a bit before starting her search, testing the new account was actually working. She logged into her Eircom account and sent an email to Lyingeyes.

  She couldn’t help but ponder her situation. She hadn’t expected the marriage certificate to look so ridiculously fancy. It looked nothing like an Irish marriage certificate. All that money wasted on a fake! She should have checked it was legal before she paid the money. Well she wouldn’t make the same mistake this time.

  Before she did anything else she checked out her situation once and for all, assuming that the Mexican certificate wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Citizens Advice sites and legal advisors weren’t exactly encouraging. They all kept telling her same thing. She had no legal standing whatsoever. It was all very well him promising to set her up for life if they ever parted, but how would he feel if they actually broke up? What if it ended up badly? She would be homeless. It wasn’t just her. She had to think of her sons. Howard had just helped David buy a house. What would happen to them if she walked out on him? She wouldn’t do anything to harm her sons. What about if Howard passed away? With his heart there was always a chance, although he had been a changed man since he had had a bypass. He could end up outliving her. Even if he did die she would still have to depend on Robert and Niall to let her have what Howard had promised her. She’d been on at him for ages to put things on a more formal level and he’d promised to, but when it came down to it there was always something more important to do and he still hadn’t gotten around to it.

  She couldn’t just wait and see how things panned out. She would have to take control. There had to be a way. Web searches for domestic violence didn’t help much. Howard wasn’t violent and had never done anything to hurt her. She’d never be able to convince anyone she was a battered woman. She idly typed in alternate searches. Hire hitman; contract killer; assassin for hire. There were an impressive number of results. It made her wonder. Was it actually possible to find a hitman online? A real actual killer, sitting at his computer waiting for your call, ready to leap into action to do your bidding—so much more convenient that taking the trip to Limerick and having to deal with a killer face to face.

  There were pages and pages of results when she typed in the terms. Most of them seemed to be referring to a computer game. That wasn’t what she was looking for. Collins wasn’t the familiar with the Hitman series of games. It’s a popular franchise that’s already spawned a film and countless chat rooms where obsessive gamers discuss tactics and cheat codes. But these sites were not going to be of any use whatsoever—unless of course one of the gamers could be persuaded to leave his bedroom for a couple of hours and put his marksmanship skills, learnt in front of his computer screen, to use. Probably not a good idea—that would be a different type of film script entirely. How do you find something other than that damn game? Collins varied the search terms she used. Hitman, Killer for hire, Assassin. There had to be something here. The afternoon was wearing on and she still hadn’t found anything useful. In between the menial demands of typing and phone calls to be made she persisted in her search. Then she found it. Or thought she did anyway.

  Hitman.us certainly looked like it meant business but unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of business she had in mind. When Collins found the site she was greeted by a black screen. As she moved her mouse around a white circle appeared centred around a crosshair sight allowing glimpses of the home page beneath. She clicked through and the page was revealed showing a down turned handgun in a leather gloved hand with the page scattered with bullet holes. In discreet text at the bottom of the page the site promised;

  ‘HITMAN offers a variety of assassination services and contract killing options. We are the industry leader in innovative killing techniques and manage a network of freelance assassins on five continents, available on short notice, around the clock. Next time you have a problem, remember: our contract killers are waiting for your call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.’

  A logo promised HITMAN – Professional Killings. The main home page of the site explained that the site offered the services of an independent outfit who could provide quick and efficient killings anywhere in the world for a fee of $50,000. They promised absolute professionalism and sure fire results. Collins wasn’t familiar with the going rate for contract killers so the fee of $50,000 didn’t seem exorbitant. The whole thing sounded so simple and efficient.

  ‘Instead of fiddling around with amateur killing techniques and messing up crime scenes, just pick up the phone and give us a call. After reviewing your case, our team will develop a customized package that is best-suited for your particular situation. You provide us with the name of your mark, along with a photo and personal details, and take a vacation; we’ll make sure one of our specialists sends flowers to the grieving widow while you enjoy your Marguerites on the beach.’

  The website even offered discounts for three or more targets. It was just what she was looking for. They even accepted all major credit cards and gave gift certificates! Clearly tempted Collins sent off an email from the Lyingeyes address to the promising Hitman at killers@hitman.us. But she was to be disappointed.
Maybe she should have observed the little black and white rabbit at the foot of every page with the guarantee that ‘Hitman is a cruelty free organization. None of our services have been tested on animals’. But Collins obviously didn’t read that far down the page. So it was a bit of a disappointment when the automatic response came back.

  ‘Please buy a HITMAN T-shirt from our online store.

  PS—This site is not to be taken seriously. Thanks for looking.’

  If she had looked around the site a bit more she could definitely have avoided any embarrassment. The testimonials suggest a somewhat dark sense of humour but no crack team of assassins.

  ‘This guy moved in next door. I didn’t like the way he looked in that shirt. So, I called HITMAN. I never saw him again. Or his shirt. Serves him right.’

  Or;

  ‘I was having a lot of problems with this jerk at work. Then I contacted HITMAN. Coincidentally, right around that time, our company organized a trip to the zoo. I was hardly able to contain my amusement next morning when I read the headline, “Terrified Onlookers Scream in Disbelief as Man Eaten Alive by Heard of Hungry Alligators”. Due to the absence of a body the cops had to identify the victim by process of elimination. Needless to say, he never bothered me again. Thanks, HITMAN.’

  If she had only read the disclaimer she would have been told that site was ‘of course’ a parody. Today, as a result of the unwanted attention the site received because of Collins’s failure to read the small print, the disclaimer is a lot longer. Since the site owners learnt of their connection to a high profile Irish trial when they were contacted in the course of researching this book, they have decided to err on the side of caution and leave absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the site does not offer hits.

  ‘First and foremost, we do not in any way promote, condone, encourage, advertise or otherwise endorse any kind of violence, crime or any kind of illegal activity, we do not engage, have never engaged in the past and will never engage in the future, in any kind of criminal or illegal activities, or any kind of endeavours that may be in violation of any laws, and we do not associate with any individuals that are involved (or have ever been involved) in any illegal or criminal activities.’

  ‘To put it in simple English, we do not in any way offer any assassination services or any kind of services similar to that nature. The content published on our web site is written as a tongue in cheek joke and is to be read solely for its comical value.’

  Hitman.us sells t-shirts and hoodies. In fact, it has sold t-shirts since it was set up in January 2005. They had never heard of Sharon Collins and were indignant at the perception, as presented by the Irish media and bloggers around the world, that they had emailed her and in some way played a part in the fiasco that was the game played by Lyingeyes and the contract killer she would later do business with.

  ‘First of all, we did not send any emails to anyone in August 2006. In fact, we hardly ever send out any emails to anyone, from that email address, or regarding the hitman site at all. It would be very easy for anyone to fake their emails, and make them appear as if they were sent from any particular email address—and there is a remote possibility that someone did just that (i.e. that someone totally unrelated to us sent an email to the person in question and made it look as if it was sent from our email address). However, if that had been the case, then it would be safe to assume that the user in question would have sent a reply to that email address, and that reply would have come to us. But we never received any such replies.’

  They went on to say that; ‘Our site is a parody. We’ve always felt this was pretty obvious from the joking content of our descriptions. Anyone with the minimal level of intelligence can make the only reasonable conclusion that the site is not serious.’

  Unfortunately it took Collins some time to realise the site was a spoof used to sell t-shirts. But it wasn’t until after she had sent some emails that she realised this, and so the website address ended up as evidence for the prosecution during her trial. The email she had sent to killers@hitman.us was blurred with the evidence that was related to the site linked to her co-accused and there was no explanation of nature of the reply she received.

  But when she realised this in August 2006 and the penny had finally dropped, she went back to her searches to find a hitman who would do the job and wasn’t a character in a game or a device to sell clothing. Luckily for her, at around lunchtime on 3 March 2006, a ‘Tony Luciano’ had registered hitmanforhire.net. The site was registered to the Las Vegas address 4467 El Quinta, the address of the apartment Eid had set up with Engle. The contact phone number had been registered to Essam Eid. Much more basic in it’s layout than hitman.us the sites had a lot in common on the surface; though hitmanforhire.net did not intend to sell t-shirts.

  Ashraf Gharbeiah would later tell the FBI that Eid had asked him about setting up a website at around the time Engle was looking for someone to murder her husband. Gharbeiah didn’t know anything about website design himself but he knew someone who did. Eid and Engle set up a meeting and within a couple of months hitmanforhire.net went live. When she took the stand in Dublin, Engle described the website as a ‘joke’. She smiled wryly as she told the court that she couldn’t understand how anyone could take the site seriously. She didn’t look at Collins as she described anyone who would fall for it as an ‘idiot’. Certainly Collins had already proved her radar was faulty to say the least when it came to spotting dodgy websites and, just as with Proxymarriages.com the previous year, if the words ‘Buyer Beware’ weren’t large and flashing on the home page Collins would accept its legitimacy without question. On 2 August 2006, in her second attempt to break into the internet underworld, she visited the site twice as she continued her quest to find a reliable contract killer online. While hitman.us trumpeted its credentials as a parody, hitmanforhire.net used a very similar model to apparently offer the service for real. Even though the website was so close to hitman.us it could be called a direct steal, the intention behind it was not to make people laugh. Though even now, it is difficult to say whether the site was genuinely offering the service it was pushing; if things had gone differently would a contract negotiated through the site actually have progressed to its planned conclusion?

  It’s not difficult to see Engle’s point. The site, now defunct, was a lot less convincing than hitman.us. It had the appearance of having been done on the cheap. The home page with its blocky yellow script on a black background proclaimed that ‘hitman for hire’ was the ‘perfect solution’. A graphic of an old school mobster loomed out of the black pointing a hand from the page. Acting as a flourish to the text that filled the body of the page and further underlining the promise of old school mafioso links was the image of a tommy gun. But there was nothing slick about the presentation of this site. Whoever had written the text for the site was obviously aware of hitman.us and had lifted from it liberally. Hitmanforhire.net showed the same brash confidence and made the same grandiose claims. The banner at the top of the home page promised the site was ‘the perfect solution for all your killing needs.’

  ‘We offer a variety of professional assassination services available worldwide. Whether you are trying to put an end to a domestic dispute or eliminate your business competitors, we have the solution for you.’

  In a direct steal from the t-shirt shop they added;

  ‘We are a privately-owned independent enterprise that specializes in reliable contract killings.

  We take our business very seriously and are the best at what we do.’

  In fact, the text followed the other site’s pitch very closely but somewhat more succinctly.

  ‘Assassinations are the most practical solutions to common problems. Thanks to the internet, ordering a hit has never been easier. We manage a network of freelance assassins, available to kill at a moment’s notice. All you have to do is send us an email, along with the details, and wait for further instructions. All the correspondence is done through our secure online forms.
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  ‘We offer several options to suit the specific needs of our clients. Each case is analyzed and designed for maximum protection and satisfaction.

  ‘Basic contracts start at base cost plus expenses. We require a photograph, bio, and address of the target, along with a deposit. The balance is due no later than 72 hours after the job is done.’

  Links led on to pages on How to Order, Secure Email and Employment. In smaller text at the very bottom of the screen there was even a disclaimer just like hitman.us but Collins didn’t notice that one either. She was perhaps beginning to work out that everything you read online isn’t necessarily so because, for once, Collins didn’t go straight to How to Order. She played it a little bit cunning and filled in the employment form instead, to try to gauge whether this site was actually doing what it said it was doing. In keeping with her new found caution she used an alias. Not Bernie Lyons this time but a name even more impenetrable. Aware of the need to cover her tracks absolutely, Collins picked her own initial and her mother’s maiden name, Cronin. Certainly no Mata Hari, Collins continued her high stakes subterfuge. In a flash of inspiration she typed in a made up phone number, they had the Lyingeyes address if they needed to contact her. She needed to find out about this quickly though. She had to find out where she stood. The best time to make contact was within the next 18 hours. Just to give them an idea what would be entailed, because the site seemed to be American, she helpfully gave her location as Ireland. No point in being any more specific until she knew she wasn’t dealing with another joke.