Jennifer Lynne Faith, the wife of an American Airlines executive who was shot dead in Texas, played the grieving widow on Television but was allegedly having “a full-blown emotional affair” with his accused killer, police authorities have revealed.
Jennifer, 48, on Thursday, February 25, was charged with federal obstruction of justice in the Oct. 9, 2020, death of her 49-year-old husband James “Jamie” Faith, according to the US Department of Justice.
According to prosecutors, she communicated with the alleged gunman, her high school sweetheart, and pushed him to get rid of evidence while she was publicly pleading for information about the case on television .
Her husband James was the IT director for American airline.
He was shot while the couple were out on a morning walk with their dog in their Dallas neighborhood.
“I heard running behind me, and I turned around and all of a sudden somebody just started shooting at him,” Jennifer told local outlet NBCDFW in December 2020.
She then pleaded for anyone with information about the case to come forward.
“My hope is that someday perhaps the person will realize the gravity of what they’ve done,” she said.
“He was just the backbone of our family. It was just devastating.”
Investigators on the 11th of January arrested Darrin Ruben Lopez, a 48-year-old man from Tennessee man and charged him with the fatal shooting. Only for them to discover he dated Jennifer in high school and college.
Authorities said that Lopez allegedly drove from Tennessee to Dallas and laid in wait for the couple before shooting James seven times and fleeing the scene.
Police discovered that between Sept. 30 and Oct. 30, 2020, Lopez and Jennifer exchanged about 14,363 calls and texts.
In January 2021, Jennifer allegedly admitted that she communicated daily with Lopez, but denied an intimate relationship, authorities said.
Only for police to find out the pair were actually “intimately involved,” after checking Lopez’s phone.
In the texts Jennifer regularly told her lover about her efforts to cash in on James’ life insurance policy, and also taught him how to respond to potential police questioning.
“If asked about you, you are an old friend going through a divorce… If it ever comes to it, I’ll answer the same way,” she allegedly wrote, according to court documents.
“Just so you and I have the same explanations. Just thinking in case they [law enforcement] pulled phone records and asked,” the texts added.
She also instructed Lopez to get rid of a “T” decal on the back window of his truck — identical to the one witnesses had reported seeing on the shooter’s pickup, prosecutors said.
Investigators added that Jennifer wiped her phone, but they were able to recover her texts with Lopez.
She was arrested at her Oak Cliff home on Wednesday February 24, and was expected to appear before a judge on Friday this week.
“Even as she publicly claimed she was ‘desperate for answers’ regarding her husband’s murder, Jennifer Faith was communicating with the alleged killer, actively urging him to destroy evidence and attempting to delete incriminating communications from her phone,” US Attorney Prerak Shah said in a statement.
“Thanks to the dedication of our agents and officers, Ms. Faith could not keep law enforcement from identifying her husband’s killer.”
