A Knoxville woman has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for her role in an unsuccessful murder-for-hire scheme targeting a Prattville woman.
Melody Sasser, 48, was sentenced to 100 months by U.S. District Thomas A. Varlan, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville, said Rochelle Barnes, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Following her imprisonment, Sasser will be on supervised release for three years. There is no parole in the federal prison system.
Sasser was also ordered to pay over $5,389.31 in restitution to the victim in the case.
In 2023, Homeland Security was contacted by a foreign law enforcement agency about a possible murder-for-hire plot involving a Prattville resident, Prattville Police Chief Mark Thompson said Wednesday. The target of the plot was the wife of a man Sasser had met on an online dating site, he said.
The couple had lived in Knoxville before moving to Prattville, so that explains the connection, Thompson said.
More: Client on ‘hitman’ site complained that murder of rival in Prattville was taking too long
As part of a plea agreement filed with the court, Sasser pled guilty to using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, Barnes said. According to filed court documents, Sasser admitted to using a dark web-hosted site known as the Online Killers Market for the purpose of hiring a hitman to murder an Alabama resident.
In her communications with the site, Sasser provided photographs and location information of the victim. Sasser also requested that the killing appear “to seem random or accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation.” In exchange for the anticipated murder of the victim, Sasser used the internet to transmit nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency to the would-be assassins.
Ultimately, the plan was unsuccessful. Sasser was arrested, and her home searched. At her house, 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.
The charges were the result of an investigation by the Homeland Security office in Knoxville and the Homeland Security in Birmingham, with the assistance of the Knoxville Police Department and the Prattville Police Department.
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Woman sentenced in murder-for-hire scheme targeting Prattville victim
