When a husband threatened his wife that he would not allow her to leave him she filed for a domestic violence protection order and left anyway. That same month, he withdrew a lot of money from an investment account.
Two months later, the wife filed for a divorce, which pushed her husband to make good on his threat. He contacted someone he thought would know someone capable of killing his wife. The husband didn’t know his conversation was with an FBI confidential informant who would connect him with a man to take care of his wife (another FBI informant).
The husband provided the informant with a strange coded system that, when strung together, disclosed his wife’s address along with instructions that he didn’t want her body found—no body, no charges—she needed to disappear.
Payment discussions included lowering the price to sell a home to the informant so that the husband didn’t actually pay the potential hitman anything which law enforcement could track.
During one of the recorded conversations with the hitman, the husband said he’d watched a thousand hours of crime shows because you never know when something like this [murder-for-hire] is needed.
He wrongly assumed since he didn’t know the hitman, the authorities wouldn’t connect the two men.
Five months after his wife left him, the authorities arrested the husband. Two years after she initiated the protection order, her ex-husband pleaded guilty to the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire of a victim. (The wheels of justice move super slow.)
A federal judge sentenced the 53-year-old man to six years in prison and ordered him to pay over $15,000 in restitution. #murderforhire
An FBI special agent associated with the case said,
“The cold and callous nature of a scheming individual is a threat to not only the victim of the action, but also the community.”
The only person harmed in this true crime was the husband who went to prison. The wife was unharmed.
Source: U.DS. District Court, U.S. State Attorney, U.S, FBI, Cleveland.com