She Wanted Someone Dead

I have never done an internet search for a hitman—for research. Call me a chicken, and I’d agree. But I’ve always been curious about true crimes that involve someone wanting someone else to kill a certain someone for them. That this goes on outside the pages of a fiction novel blows my mind.

In this case, it was a jealous ex-girlfriend who wanted her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend killed. Paraphrasing the original phrase in the 1697 play, The Mourning Bride, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

After the bitter ex-girlfriend connected with a Las Vegas casino poker dealer on a hitman website, he’d created. He told her the price for the hit was $37,000. She agreed and made a down payment. The down payment money came from her stealing credit card information she had access to through her employment.

The hitman and wife number two drove to the intended victim’s location. They boldly made an appointment to meet with the loan broker and falsely claimed they needed her services. After the introductions, the hitman told her someone wanted her dead, but he didn’t want to kill her because she reminded him of his daughter—he really had a daughter.

He produced evidence to support what he’d told her, an email validating the woman’s new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend had paid him $17,000 as a down payment on the hit. Rather than carry out his contract, he suggested the woman pay him the balance owed on the hit, $20,000, to cancel the contract.

He gave her a few days to gather the money. Instead, she called the FBI, and they set a sting in motion.

While the intended victim was being briefed on her role in the sting, the hitman and wife were in Ireland setting up another hit. I’ll share more about that next week.

Not knowing he was being recorded by the FBI, the hitman called the intended victim in the USA contract killing. When the woman expressed concern that someone else might hire someone to kill her, he told her a fabricated story about the hitman world. His father was the leader of the hitman syndicate, which controlled 700 hitmen worldwide. If someone else took out a contract on her life, his father would take care of it.

Before the FBI could request his extradition to be prosecuted in the USA, the authorities in Ireland arrested and convicted him for extortion and handling stolen property. After serving time in Ireland, they extradited him to the USA, where he pleaded guilty to extortion charges. The court sentenced him to almost three years in prison. After his release, he returned to Egypt, where he was from, and has since died.

The woman, who had hired the man’s services through his hitman website to kill her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, pleaded guilty to many crimes. A federal judge sentenced the 29-year-old woman to six years in prison.

An FBI special agent associated with this crime said,

“A lot of people might say they want someone dead, but unless you do something to put it in action, you haven’t committed a crime.”

Murder-for-hire became a federal crime in 1958. The head of the Violent Crimes Unit at the time this crime took place said about murder-for-hire,

“We do a lot of them. The names change; the story doesn’t.”

Source: United States District Attorney, FBI, Las Vegas Sun

All data and information provided is for information and research purposes only and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. Criminal cases may have been appealed or verdicts overturned since I researched the case. All information is provided on an as-is basis.