Soldier believed hitman website was 'just a prank'
Saturday June 14 2008
An Irish soldier contacted a website advertising contract killings because he thought it was a joke, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Private Brian Buckley told the court he found the site Hireahitman.us while searching for cheat codes for the Hitman computer game.
Sharon Collins (45), of Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road, Ennis, Co Clare, and Essam Eid (52), an Egyptian man with an address in Las Vegas, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard, between August 1 and September 26, 2006.
Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to shoot the three men.
Mr Eid denies demanding €100,000 from Robert Howard to cancel the contracts. He also denies breaking into the Howard family business at Westgate Business Park and stealing two computers, some computer cables, a digital clock and a poster of old Irish money and then handling the stolen items.
Pvt Buckley said the website was top of the list of Google search results so he assumed it was the site he was looking for.
The homepage of the site made him think it was an internet prank.
Pvt Buckley came to a kind of application form. "Out of my own curiosity, or my own stupidity, I decided to fill out the form."
False
Using the email address Judas69@gmail.com he filled out the form, giving a false telephone number and a false name, Will Buckimer.
He made first contact with the website on July 29, 2006, and received a reply from a Tony Luciano on August 10.
The reply read: "I have a job for you if you are interested. Two males in Ireland and one in Spain. ASAP. Let us know. We will try and call you. Thanks. Tony Luciano."
On August 28, he received another email from Tony Luciano. "Please help us out for this. I need some strong poison. One of us will be in Shannon. We cannot shift this stuff for security reasons -- you know that -- so please help us out. Will pay and I will owe you favourite. Thanks brother. Tony." Pvt Buckley said that this email made him feel uneasy and he decided to distance himself. He received several emails from the man calling himself Tony Luciano but would not talk to him and kept telling he had the wrong number.
The court also heard from Detective Sgt Michael Gubbins who forensically examined an Advent computer stolen from the office of Howards' business.
He found certain files corresponding to keywords relating to the case. These files related to the email address Lyingeyes98@yahoo.ie and showed an increasingly flirtatious correspondence between Lyingeyes98 and hire_hitman@yahoo.com.
Det Sgt Gubbins said a file showing the inbox of Lyingeyes98 showed a welcome email from Yahoo dated August 2, 2006.
Also on August 2, an email had been sent from sharoncollins@eircom.net.
On August 3, a file cached from the website Hitmanforhire.us showed a form filled out. The name was given as Sn Cronin with an email address at Lyingeyes98. Whoever filled the form in said they wanted to "make money doing something useful".
Successive emails between B Lyons, at Lyingeyes, some of which were signed Sharon, and Tony Luciano, at hire_hitman, were found.
On August 14, an email from Tony Luciano asks B Lyons to send money to T Engle at 6108 Camden Cove Street, Mr Eid's Las Vegas address.
The email gave bank details for an account in the name Essam Eid.
Several photographs in the computer's memory. There were photographs of PJ, Robert and Niall Howard ,as well as Sharon Collins. The trial will continue on Monday.
- Abigail Rieley
