A woman from Tennessee who tried to hire a hitman to kill the fiancée of a “hiking friend” she met on Match.com has been given eight years in jail.
In a murder-for-hire plot on September 18, a federal judge gave Melody Sasser, 48, of Knoxville, 100 months in jail, which is equal to 8 years and 4 months. This was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Tennessee.
An agreement between Sasser and federal prosecutors said he would admit to using facilities for interstate trade to murder for hire.
According to a criminal charge that PEOPLE has already looked over, Sasser met David Wallace on Match.com in 2020, when Wallace and his now-wife lived in Knoxville.
The lawsuit says Sasser and Wallace were “hiking friends.” A local news source, 10 News, says the two had been on several hikes together. No information about whether or not they were ever dating is in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, things started to go badly when Wallace moved to Alabama with his fiancée and told Sasser that they were getting married.
The lawsuit says Sasser told the two of them, “I hope you both fall off a cliff and die.” The lawsuit says that Sasser then went to Alabama and showed up at Wallace’s house without warning. At that point, Wallace’s fiancée told police that her car had been broken into and that she was getting threatening calls, the complaint said. The lawsuit said that Sasser was also following the couple around by using a fitness app on their Garmin watches to see where they were.
According to the release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, things got worse in January 2023 when Sasser hired a hitman to kill Wallace’s fiancée through the Online Killers Market, a site that was housed on the dark web.
“In her communications with the site, Sasser gave pictures of the victim and information about where she was,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Also, Sasser asked that the killing “look like it happened by chance or by accident.” The release says, “Or plant drugs, don’t want a long investigation.” For the planned murder of the victim, Sasser sent nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency to the people who wanted to kill the victim.
As the lawsuit says, Sasser didn’t know that the website was a scam.
Officials say Sasser made her first order on January 11, 2023, and in March, she sent a follow-up message to the site administrator asking why the woman’s killing was taking so long.
“The job hasn’t been done yet after two months and eleven days of waiting… does someone else need to be given it? Are you going to do it? “Why is there a delay?” It says in the lawsuit that she wrote.
A 2023 release says that Sasser was arrested in June 2023 after a grand jury charged her with using facilities for interstate trade to murder for hire.
The release says that when police searched her home, they found a journal with a list of other hitman websites, a handwritten record of conversations with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of U.S. cash under a sticky note with a Bitcoin address.
According to 10 News, federal prosecutor Anne-Marie Svolto told the judge during the sentencing hearing that the book “was a hidden rage that she kept secret for months.”
Sasser’s lawyer said that his client feels bad about what she did. 10 News reports that her lawyer, Jeff Whitt, said, “She wants [the victim] to be able to move on with her life.”
“Her actions were the result of a breakdown of huge proportions,” 10 News reported that attorney Jeff Whitt said.
After Sasser finishes her time in jail, she will be under close supervision for three years.
The victim decided that Sasser should pay $5,389 to make things right.