A Knoxville woman accepted a plea deal on Wednesday for 100 months in prison for hiring an online hitman to kill the wife of a man she met on a dating website, according to authorities.
Melody Sasser, 48, shelled out nearly $10,000 in Bitcoin to a hitman through the dark website ‘Online Killers Market’ in 2023, according to court documents.
Sasser registered herself under the username “cattree” and reached out to the website administrator to advertise her request.
“It needs to seem random or accident. or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation. She recently moved in with her new husband,” she wrote.
The target of the hit, only identified by the initials JW, lives in Prattville, Alabama with her husband DW. Sasser claimed to have met DW on Match.com, a dating website popular with millennials.
DW said that Sasser had helped him on a hike along the Appalachian Trail before he moved to Alabama and married JW.
Two months passed after the hit job had been assigned, and Sasser grew impatient. In the meantime, she left threatening voicemails on JW’s phone using an app to disguise her voice, according to court documents.
She also tracked the couple’s locations using an app called Strava, an exercise app where users upload the mileage and routes of their past runs. She messaged the administrator of the dark website when JW would be on a two-mile walk based on the app info.
“I have waited for 2 months and 11 days and the job is not completed. 2 weeks ago you said it was been worked on and would be done in a week. the job is still not done. does it need to be assigned to someone else? will it be done? what is the delay? when will it be done, [SIC]” Sasser wrote in a message to the administrator.
The same website offers services like hacking, kidnapping, extortion, disfigurement by acid attack, and sexual violence, WVLT reported.
Law enforcement uncovered a journal at her home listing a slew of other hitman websites, a handwritten history of communications with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of US currency with a note attached listing a Bitcoin address.
On June 7, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Sasser for the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
On top of the more than eight-year sentence, she will have to pay over $5,000 in restitution.