LYING EYES
“It was good fun to shoot it. I was going from being a wannabe killer to a domestic violence victim all in the one day so it was quite intense.
“Whether I think she was guilty or innocent, my job was just to play what she believed.”
Collins used the internet alias “lyingeyes98” in 2006 to hire a hitman and send a €15,000 down payment on a contract to murder her wealthy partner and his boys Robert and Niall.
She served three years and nine months of a six-year sentence in Limerick prison before her release in 2012.
The 53-year-old, from Co Clare, has since started a new life in Belfast where she works as a masseuse.
Egyptian-born poker dealer Essam Eid pretended to be a professional hitman called Tony Luciano in email correspondence with Collins.
He was jailed for extortion after demanding €100,000 from PJ’S sons to buy out the contract. Crime reporter Donal Mcintyre and leading criminologist Professor David Wilson dissect the case on TV3’S Assassins tomorrow night.
A re-enactment of Collins’ emails begin with her telling Las Vegas conman Eid she is “extremely nervous sending this message”.
Communications then progress on to arranging a deposit and ordering him to proceed with the hit on all three.
Mr Wilson says: “Once you start going down that road there is no turning back. People will behave online in the privacy of their study in ways they never dream of behaving in reality.” At one point Collins sends Eid a photograph identifying PJ and her stepsons and refers to herself on the left of the image as “the devil in the red dress”.
Criminologist Emma Kelly said: “I think what’s never been discussed before about Sharon Collins is an element of boredom. What starts off as something business-like turns into something from the movies.
“She’s being very theatrical. She’s playing out a fantasy. What transpires is a morbid flirtation between two caricatures of themselves.”
EXTORTION
Mcintyre will tell viewers in the show : “Sharon Collins was to all intents and purposes a woman who appeared to be a doting mother and devoted homemaker. “She believed she was talking to a professional hitman, but she was in fact dealing with an extortionist and a man who was already on the radar of the FBI.” Sharon Collins’ story is told on Assassins on TV3 tomorrow at 9pm. sylvia.pownall@irishmirror.ie