Here you have another heated divorce with a mother and father battling for custody. The father’s new wife decides it’s a good plan to hire a hitman to kill the ex-girlfriend, a.k.a. the mother of the children—and if the ex-girlfriend’s husband was home at the time of the killing, to kill him, too.
The meeting took place in a fast-food restaurant’s parking lot with the wife and a hired killer who was an undercover police officer. Other law enforcement officers were in the parking. Recorded by a hidden camera, she gave the green light for the man to kill her husband’s ex-girlfriend and possibly the woman's husband, too. She paid the ‘hitman’ a deposit of $125. Then she went shopping in the mall.
As she exited the mall, law enforcement arrested her.
The defendant routinely went to court dressed to kill. She’d wear a tight dress and stilettos, her make-up expertly applied. Upon entering the courtroom, to strike a better pose for the photographers, she’d stop, bend one knee and raise her foot. She often winked at the jurors. News articles named her a ‘Femme fatale.’
The strategy to dress and behave provocatively didn’t sway the jury. They took less than one hour to find her guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. A judge sentenced her to seven years in prison.
She appealed the verdict based on an error made in the indictment narrative. For conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, there needs to be an underlying overt act spelled out in the indictment and there wasn’t one. After over one year incarcerated, she was once again a free woman.
After her release, she had time to divorce, remarry, get pregnant and have a baby. Then the district attorney re-indicted her with the proper language in the indictment.
Reportedly, her attorney said,
“This time, she won’t be wearing any eye-popping outfits in court.”
Rather than go to trial a second time, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. A judge sentenced her to five years in prison, less the 16 months she’d already served. #dressedtokill #femmefatale #murderforhire
Again, as is more often the case than not, nothing good came out of this attempt to circumvent the parental rights phase of divorce.
Source: The Columbus Dispatch, People, Oxygen, Inside Edition, Columbus Monthly
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