Caring, loving and a decent lady' - millionaire pleads for woman who sent hitman to kill him

An Irishwoman who hired a hitman on the internet was sentenced to six years in jail yesterday for attempting to murder her wealthy ex-partner and his two sons, even though her former lover forgave her in court and pleaded for her freedom.

The case of 45-year-old Sharon Collins gripped Ireland as details emerged during the seven-week trial of her attempt to get an Egyptian-born Las Vegas poker player to murder her former partner PJ Howard and his sons.

She used the nom de plume Lying Eyes to contact Essam Eid in cyberspace and persuaded him to take part in a Jacobean-style murder plot which involved the two brothers being poisoned.

Eid was found guilty of demanding money with menace after he double-crossed Collins, and was also sentenced to six years.

Yesterday the case took another bizarre turn when Howard tried to plea for leniency for the woman who plotted to kill him. He urged the court not to jail Collins and said he would have no qualms about living with her again. Howard described his former partner as "caring, loving and a decent lady".

Howard had already visited his ex-partner in jail and at one point during the trial he kissed her on the lips in front of the court.

His two sons were less forgiving. Robert and Niall Howard said they would struggle to get over the saga for the rest of their lives. In their victim impact statement the brothers told the court: "Knowing that we were made the subjects of a contract to kill has affected us socially and emotionally. We are more self-conscious, always looking over our shoulder."

They said their business reputation had suffered as a result of the threat, and revealed that their father's stance throughout the trial had damaged their relationship with him.

"We can't understand why 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.

"It will take a long time, if at all, before we can put the incident behind us."

The trial heard that Collins first met the multimillionaire property owner in 1998 after she separated from her first husband, with whom she had two sons. Howard was worth €12m (£9.6m), owning homes in the west of Ireland and Spain as well as a boat called Heartbeat, named after his quadruple heart bypass operation in 2000.

Despite their long relationship, Howard refused to marry Collins after the death of his wife in 2003 because he did not want anyone claiming his sons' inheritance. His refusal to marry angered Collins, the court heard. The trial was told that she was behind a series of poison emails to RTE radio in Dublin accusing her partner of frequenting prostitutes and transvestite clubs.

Under the pseudonym lyingeyes98, she visited a website, Hitmen for Hire, which was set up from Eid's home.

In emails to him in August 2006 she suggested he arrange a fatal accident for Howard's sons and then kill Howard himself, dressing up the murder as suicide brought on by grief.

In one email Collins wrote: "His boys are going to suffer. I wish it didn't have to be like this, but I know that if my husband was dead and they were still here, they'd screw me."

Collins put down a €15,000 (£12,000) deposit on the contract. As part of the plot Collins even bought a €1,000 Mexican marriage certificate obtained through another website, which she hoped would prove she was Howard's wife and enable her to claim the inheritance.

Her scheme crumbled when Eid flew to the west of Ireland in September 2006, having changed his mind about the murders. Instead Eid attempted to blackmail the Howard family, asking for €100,000 to cancel the planned assassination.

However, Robert Howard had called the police, and a surveillance operation was mounted against Eid, which in turn led the police to Collins and the plot to kill the family.

Foiled plots: 'Hit' plans that failed

April 2003

George Fallows, 57, a businessman from Llangernyw in Conwy, wanted to avoid paying his wife Karen, 37, a large divorce settlement. He was jailed for five years at Chester crown court after attempting to hire a hitman to smash a lorry into her car; the hitman was, in fact, an undercover police officer. Police took Mrs Fallows into hiding, and even faked an accident in case her husband checked up.

March 2007

Businesswoman Ann Hunter, 49, from Chiswick in west London, was jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey after plotting to kill or maim Colin Love, 54, and his wife Judith. She developed an uncontrollable hatred for the woman who married Love, Hunter's longtime partner. Through her new boyfriend Hunter tried to recruit an ex-soldier to put Judith Love in a wheelchair or blind her. He introduced the pair to a "hitman" - in fact, an undercover police officer.

June 2008

Care worker Zoe Kenealy, 44, of Kenley, Surrey, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband Timothy, 51, and collect £33,000 insurance, and was jailed for seven years. She took out a £4,500 home loan to hire her neighbour, but he kept the money and did nothing. When she then asked her family for more cash, her father contacted police.