Sex, guns and prior convictions were the emerging themes on Thursday in the trial of a Silver Spring resident accused of conspiring to kill his gay lover.

Erik Collins, 44, was charged with soliciting the murder of Lorenzo Boone, 22, after allegedly posing as Boone to purchase $400,000 in accidental death insurance. Prosecutors claim that Collins then asked two District men to purchase a gun and kill Boone, whom he had been living with for several months. Collins was arrested before the alleged plot could be carried out.

On the third day of the trial in Superior Court, a 43-year-old man testified Collins had paid him several times to perform a “non-contact sex act,” before asking him in September 2007 to buy a gun and kill someone in North Carolina.

“[Collins] said, ‘I got an insurance policy, and I'm going to cash it in,’” the witness said.

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The witness, who is currently in jail on five misdemeanor charges, has a long criminal history including convictions on possession and distribution of cocaine, larceny, and assault on a police officer. He said he is addicted to crack cocaine, and misled Collins to get money for drugs.

During one encounter, he said, Collins received a phone call from the man in North Carolina.

“Then he hung up and said, ‘I want this [expletive] dead,’ ” the witness said.

The other man, 33-year-old Zjamal Butler, said he arranged with Collins to meet the unidentified victim at their apartment in Maryland to “blow his head off.”

Butler went to the Metropolitan Police Department, who asked him to record his phone calls with Collins. They also arranged for Collins to purchase a gun from an undercover officer posing as “Mike-Mike,” a drug dealer.

The defense has not presented their case, but Collins' attorney, Warren Gorman, said he plans to focus on the credibility of the two primary witnesses. The trial continues on Monday morning.