A Tennessee woman who plotted to hire a hitman to kill the wife of a man she met on Match.com will spend the next eight years in prison.
A judge also sentenced Melody Sasser, 48, of Knoxville, Tennessee, to three years probation and ordered her to pay nearly $5400 in restitution after she struck a plea deal with prosecutors, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Tennessee announced Wednesday.
Sasser pleaded guilty to using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire after she visited the Online Killers Market on the dark web in 2023, looking to hire a hitman to take out the wife of a man she met through the online dating website.
She paid nearly $10,000 in Bitcoin for the ordered hit.
"It needs to seem random or accident[al]. or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation. she recently moved in with her new husband," the criminal complaint read, identifying the target as a woman in Birmingham, Alabama.
When investigators went to interview the target to inform her she was in danger, she explained that Sasser and her new husband were hiking friends in Knoxville, prior to the couple relocating to Birmingham.
The woman's husband told investigators Sasser "assisted him in his planned Appalachian Trail hike by making reservations at known hostels and other rest points and took care of his vehicle for him in his absence" in 2022.
After the pair moved, Sasser visited them at their home, unannounced and told them, "I hope you both fall off a cliff and die," according to the complaint.
"During their investigation, law enforcement uncovered a journal listing out several other hitman websites, a handwritten account of communications with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of U.S. currency underneath a sticky note listing a Bitcoin address," prosecutors said.
