Engle flew back to Ireland and spent some more time getting to know her way around Ennis. Then on 4 September she got the plane home with some relief. She had picked up a lot of information but the outcome Collins had been hoping for did not come to pass. Howard, Robert and Niall could sleep soundly in their beds for a few more weeks untroubled by the plot unfolding around them. For the conspirators, though, it would be back to the drawing board. The plot had another act to unfold but before it could they needed another prop to convince their marks of their sincerity.
CHAPTER 10:
RICIN ROULETTE
Engle arrived back in Las Vegas, having gathered some useful information as well as the keys, but it would take some convincing if Collins was going to continue to play along. Communication had dried up for the moment, and trust would not be restored until there was proof that ‘Luciano’ and his team were up to the job.
Engle would later say that she was a willing participant in the manufacture of a poison that was intended to kill the Howards. She described how, sometime before she and Eid travelled to Ireland for the culmination of their plot, they made poison in their garage and set in motion a chain of events that would lead to one of Ireland’s first bioterrorism alert. She said that at some stage in September 2006 she and Eid gathered together some castor beans and a drum of acetone bought over the internet through Lisa’s Paypal account and, using standard kitchen appliances, attempted to manufacture one of the most dangerous toxins known to mankind.
Ricin has developed something of a celebrity status over the years. Biological warfare has taken on a new and sinister enormity since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Not since the long dark nights of the Cold War has the world seemed so scary and terrorism become so widespread. Suddenly people became aware that the kind of subterranean chemistry experiments that had been doing the rounds since the 1960s could now be uploaded onto the internet and made freely available. Information that was one step away from urban myth took on the currency of terror and became something that would hold up in court. As the recipes of kitchen terrorism took on a darker respectability, would-be assassins tried them out, and again and again they hit the headlines. Out of all the half-baked and factually inaccurate recipes uploaded onto the internet, ricin was the one that made the most headlines.
Ricin comes from the castor bean; the same nondescript small brown bean that produces castor oil. The substance is a naturally occurring toxin that’s present in the bean before it germinates. It could be there as nature’s way of deterring hungry birds to give the bean the best chance to become a shoot. Certainly it’s not the only bean that would have a nasty effect on the stomach in its natural state. Even the humble red kidney bean contains a similar but less lethal protein that can cause a nasty stomach upset if the bean is eaten raw.
Ricin is much more potent, however. It’s estimated that it would only take an amount of the pure poison the size of a grain of salt to kill an adult human. It would take around 100 grains of arsenic to produce the same result. Add to this the fact that the castor plant is a popular decorative shrub and easily available. It’s grown in gardens and as a house plant and in parts of the United States it grows wild. You can buy the seeds from any garden centre and they’re freely available online. The thought that something so deadly could be growing happily at the bottom of your garden is an attractive thought for the more homicidally inclined mind. It’s handy then that the recipes that are freely available online are so simple that anyone can make them.
Ricin makes a perfect poison for various reasons. It has no antidote and cannot be detected in the victim. There is no telltale scent or distracting taste to alert the target and death is almost guaranteed.
The only two substances nastier are plutonium and botulism. It might only make up between 1% and 5% of the castor bean but it would only take swallowing around half a dozen beans before you would be in serious trouble. It is estimated to be, gram for gram, around six thousand times more poisonous than cyanide and around 12,000 times more potent than rattle snake venom. Once it gets into the blood it makes the red blood cells clump together and eventually burst as they die. It also causes haemorrhaging in the intestinal tract and irreparable damage to the livers and kidneys. It’s this action that has led to it being used successfully in the treatment of cancer. The ricin is made to bond with an antibody which can seek out the tumour cells, delivering the ricin to have its devastating effect. This isn’t generally the way ricin makes the headlines though. It’s the effect on the human body when the toxin doesn’t have any benevolent antibodies steering its route that has earned it its reputation. A fatal poisoning with ricin means a slow and painful death with no hope of reprieve. All doctors are able to do to assist the victims is to make them as comfortable as possible.
Despite its toxicity, ricin has limited use as a so-called weapon of mass destruction.[1] During the Second World War, both the Americans and the British explored the development of a ricin bomb but they couldn’t get beyond the fact the bombs generally have to explode and proteins like ricin don’t react too well to extreme heat. More recently, ricin was found stockpiled by Saddam Hussein whose scientists had been exploring new ways of weaponizing it. The Iraqi regime declared eleven litres of the toxin but stated they had given up on the idea of mass dissemination in the early 1990s. It’s widely accepted that the most effective way of weaponizing the toxin would be to make it into a fine spray but this has proved a lot more difficult than it sounds. In fact, despite the toxin’s high media profile and undoubtedly lethal properties, the American authorities acknowledge that it is unsuited to mass attacks and its main power lies in terrorising the populous rather than decimating it. Even so, ricin still has an impressive reputation as a tool of assassination and a strong online mystique. Presumably this was behind its selection for use in the ‘Lying Eyes’ conspiracy, but despite its semi regular appearances in the news and the media frenzy surrounding it, as a tool of international espionage it is somewhat underused.
There is one confirmed assassination attributed to ricin poisoning. That death occurred at the height of the Cold War and is the stuff of spy novels.
Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and dissident, became the only confirmed victim of ricin poisoning when he was stabbed with a toxic umbrella. It’s not known who carried out the hit but in the summer of 2008 the case was reopened with the full cooperation of the now democratic Bulgarian government. The murder has passed into popular culture, much referenced by writers and artists over the past thirty years. But what is often forgotten is that Markov wasn’t the only victim of a ricin attack that year. Ten days earlier a fellow Bulgarian dissident, Vladimir Kostov had also been shot with a ricin pellet in a Paris Metro station. However, on this occasion the sugar coating didn’t melt and only some of the ricin got into Kostov’s bloodstream. After a couple of days with a raging fever he recovered. So the famous ricin assassination technique that’s gone down in history as sure fire and deadly actually had a success rate of 50%. While the high failure rate with the KGB’s injection technique may have been simply to do with the fact that Kostov was wearing thicker clothes than the unfortunate Georgi Markov, it is in line with the experience of many plotters who attempt to make the toxin their chosen weapon.
Ricin might not have been on the list put forward by ‘John Smith’ when he was advising ‘Tony Luciano’ on the best way to kill but the twelve step recipe that had been downloaded promised a sure fire death from the results of an experiment that apparently needed no more than high school chemistry knowledge. It didn’t matter that the toxin that had been chosen was, in all likelihood, completely unsuitable for the plan that had been agreed between Collins and Eid. If the plan was to be completed according to the emails then Robert and Niall Howard would need to die within 24 hours of their father. If ricin had been used they could have lingered on for three or four days, even possibly survived.
But ricin had nevertheless been chosen as the right toxin and would be ma
de. Engle described the process in the evidence she later gave in court. She said that once the recipe had been found the order was put in for some castor beans and some acetone, the two major ingredients required in the recipe. On the day they decided to brew up the toxin, she said they dressed up in masks and gloves and put the castor beans on to boil. After a while they took the beans off the heat and painstakingly took off the skins. They then took the skinned beans and put them in a blender with some of the acetone and a mystery third ingredient and blended them. Once the ingredients were blended they were passed through a coffee filter to get rid of the liquid. The filter was left to dry and was then scraped to collect the white powder that was left behind. Engle estimated that, through this method, they gathered enough powder to fill both sides of a contact lens case. There was little or no excess. She told the court that Eid had brought the contact lens case with him to Ireland.
It seems extraordinary that such a deadly poison could be manufactured so easily using equipment no more specialised that a food processor and a coffee filter. The recipe that Engle described in her evidence is similar to countless recipes for ricin found through a quick internet search. Most of the time the recipes come from just two sources and both sources are flawed procedures for extracting ricin from castor beans.[2] They have circulated through cyberspace for years, being rewritten and tweaked but the basic chemistry behind them is the same, what they produce is essentially a castor bean mash rather than pure ricin, a substance with more in common with the castor oil cake that was used as a fertiliser in the United States for years than a laboratory grade toxin to be used in biological warfare. The resultant white powder does indeed contain ricin, in around the same concentration as it is found in the bean in its natural state.
In the end Eid was not convicted on the charge of conspiracy to murder, when the jury failed to reach a decision. Eid was neither convicted nor acquitted. It’s impossible to say how much ricin was manufactured by Engle and Eid but they believed they had gathered enough to kill Niall and Robert Howard.
[1] Although it is incorrect to call ricin a weapon of mass destruction, it is specifically banned by the Convention on Biological Weapons.
[2] See globalsecurity.org’s National Security Notes 20/1/2004 The Recipe for Ricin: Examining the legend by George Smith PhD.
CHAPTER 11:
BUSTED
It was several weeks before Collins had any further contact from ‘Luciano’ after Engle’s visit to Ireland in early September. Then on Monday, 18 September 2006 the phone calls started again. The plan was still on. They phoned each other back and forth for a couple of days before the email arrived on Wednesday morning.
‘Info, that’s what I need from you and very important.
1: Robert’s birthday.
2: Niall’s birthday.
3: P.J.’s birthday.
4: The safe in Malaga’s number (maybe the same number in Ireland).
5: Your birthday (sorry maybe it help).
6: Any number you think it help to use to open the safe there. Most people used number to remember and not to forget. We will do it as burglary but we do have this number it help a lot. How low will we go?’
It was a couple of days before Collins had the chance to reply. She was still in Spain and as she had warned earlier it wasn’t as easy to get internet access there. There was none at the apartment. Finally on Friday she wrote:
‘I’ll try to find out the number of the safe but I can’t make it look suspicious. For example, I ask for the number and then somebody breaks in and opens it—especially when I’m not there. What would I want it for? Anyway the dates you asked for are as follows [she supplied a list of birth dates]. I can’t think of anything else but if I do, I will email you. Take laptop with you!’
It was time for the final trip to Ireland. Tickets were booked for Eid and Engle to fly back to Shannon, this time paid for with P.J. Howard’s own American Express credit card. Collins kept the number in her wallet. She was the one who took care of all the internet banking and with the amount of travelling they did it was just so much easier that way. She had told Howard the wallet had been stolen sometime around the beginning of August, around the time Engle was around the resort. Certainly he never saw her with that purse again.
On the Saturday, Collins called Eid again to go over the last minute details. He and Engle were due to catch a plane the following day. It was almost time to make the final moves. On Sunday morning, Collins wrote again with some last minute information.
‘Hi Tony, I couldn’t get away. We have guests in again and it is difficult. It may be hard to ring you later but I will do my best without looking suspicious. The guys are at home—didn’t go away—so they might be out locally tonight. I have tried to get in touch this morning but their phones are off—I will try again later. The code is as I said. Nothing else.’
She was getting nervous and it wasn’t long before she wrote again.
‘You should have all available information now. Difficult to make contact at the moment—visitors as usual. Will ring later—or email if it’s possible to get away. Ok?’
But Eid and Engle were already on their way to Ireland. They touched down in Shannon Airport that afternoon and, armed with the foreknowledge of Engle’s previous visit, headed straight to the car rental desk. It would have been too risky to use Howard’s card details here, whipping out a piece of paper in full view of the girl behind the desk who might be curious about where the actual card was. In the end Eid used his own card for the light blue Hyundai Getz they hired. Like an old married couple, Engle handled the forms and took over the driving since she had some idea of where they were going.
This time they hadn’t booked into a hotel in Ennis itself. The Two Mile Inn had looked suitable and had the advantage of being less expensive and anonymous as well, the kind of place frequented by travelling salesmen and tourists. It had seemed a good choice when they had booked it online, once again using Howard’s credit card details. Technically it was in Limerick but it was on the way to Ennis, and handy for the airport. It was also secluded. They booked into Room 208 as a couple but Eid was quick to ring Lisa once they had settled in, who thought he was in Ireland alone. Eid could be a very conscientious husband and kept in contact throughout the trip—at least until his arrest.
That evening they took it easy after the long trip from the States. Engle would later say that on the first evening in Ireland they simply took a drive into Ennis. They went out to the Westgate Business Park to get a look at Downes & Howard while it was still bright. The following evening, they would have to steal the desktop computer that was worrying Collins so much. It should be a simple enough job. Collins had provided the alarm code and her directions were extremely detailed. She had also thoughtfully left the keys for the office under a brick at the back of a house on the Clare Road. The road was actually known as the Limerick Road on the signs but Eid and Engle had Collins’s detailed directions. What they had no way of knowing when they found the house was that this house belonged to Collins’s younger son, David.
When they arrived at the house on that August evening in 2006 the house was empty as promised. Of course, Collins had known it would be—she had done most of the negotiating on David’s behalf, even stopping off while doing her internet searches for a hitman to organise the exchange of the contracts at the beginning of September. The keys were where they were supposed to be, under a concrete block at the back of the house where they had sat since before Collins had flown to Spain. The keys safely recovered, Eid and Engle headed back to the Two Mile Inn to get some sleep.
The next day they rested until the evening. The preparations had been done and it was a simple matter of waiting until it was dark enough to break into the office. They had come prepared with all the thoroughness of two people completely unused to this kind of adventure. Their suitcase was a dressing up box for cat burglars. Rather than opting for simplicity and stealth, the disguises were one step away from stripy tops and b
ags marked SWAG. They carried black leather gloves, Hallowe’en masks, a blonde wig and a black wig.
Engle would later give the following account of the break in while giving evidence in court. She explained that Collins had given them all the details they needed to remove the computer. When she arrived at the office that evening she had the keys and the codes for the alarm. The computer was sitting where it was supposed to be in the reception area. They only needed the hard drive so the monitor and the bulky cables remained where they were. Then there was ample time to have a look around the rest of the office. There was a blue Toshiba laptop in Robert’s office. That was taken along with the power cables and the yellow (Ethernet) cable for connecting to the internet, as well as a digital clock. Then, finally, a souvenir of the adventure—a picture from the wall—a framed poster of the old Lady Lavery Irish bank notes. Taken out of its frame the poster could fold up small enough to fit under a jacket. It might not be legal tender, or even close to it, but it was a decorative thing, and a fine reminder of an Irish visit. Now laden with ill gotten gains, it was too much trouble to turn the alarm back on and close the Chubb lock on exit just over ten minutes later. At that time of night it also seemed a long way to the sea, so Collins’s instructions were once again not carried out to the letter. Back at the Two Mile Inn it seemed simplest to dump the computers around the back of the hotel where they could remain hidden. The hard drive stolen from reception would remain here until it was located by a caretaker some weeks later. But Eid had other plans for the laptop.
The Devil in the Red Dress Page 12
