A Knoxville woman accepted a plea deal Wednesday to serve 100 months in prison for hiring an online hit man to kill the wife of a man she met on a dating site, authorities said.
According to court documents, Melody Sasser, 48, paid the hitman about $10,000 in Bitcoin in 2023 through the dark web site Online Killers Market.
Sasser registered under the username “cattree” and contacted the website's administrator to advertise his request.
“It needs to look like a coincidence or accident. Or drugs planted. I don't want a long investigation. She recently started living with her new husband,” she wrote.
The target of the attack, identified only by his initials, JW, lives in Prattville, Alabama with his husband, DW, whom Sasser claims to have met on Match.com, a dating site popular with millennials.
DW said that before she moved to Alabama and married JW, Sasser helped her hike along the Appalachian Mountains.
Two months into the mission, Sasser's patience grew sour that, according to court documents, he used a voice disguise app to leave threatening voicemails on JW's cell phone.
She also tracked the couple's location using Strava, an exercise app where users upload the distance and routes of their previous runs. Using the information from the app, she sent a message to the dark web site administrator when JW was planning to walk two miles.
“I have been waiting for 2 months and 11 days but the work has not been completed. You said the work started 2 weeks ago and will be completed in a week. The work is still not completed. Should I assign it to someone else? Will it be completed? What is the delay? When will it be completed?” [SIC]Sasser wrote in a message to administrators:
The same website also offers services such as hacking, kidnapping, blackmail, acid attacks resulting in disfigurement and sexual assault. WVLT reported.
At her home, police found a diary listing numerous other hit man websites, a handwritten history of correspondence with online killer marketplaces, and bundles of U.S. dollars with notes attached that contained Bitcoin addresses.
On June 7, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Sasser on charges of using a facility of interstate commerce to commit murder-for-hire.
She faces more than eight years in prison and must pay more than $5,000 in restitution.
