A woman accused of attempting to hire a hitman, via the dark web, to murder the wife of a man she reportedly met on Match.com, has been sentenced.
48-year-old Melody Sasser of Knoxville, Tennessee agreed to a deal in which she pled guilty to using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and was given a 100-month prison sentence this week. Following her imprisonment, she’ll be on supervised release for three years; she was also ordered to pay more than $5,000 in restitution to the victim.
The target of the murder plot told investigators that Sasser was a hiking buddy of her husband’s before he moved to Alabama. It’s unclear whether the two ever had a romantic connection. Per the criminal complaint, the husband, identified simply as D.W. in court docs, said Sasser became upset when he told her he was getting married.
“I hope you both fall off a cliff and die,” Sasser told D.W., reported NBC News.
Per the affidavit, a Homeland Security Investigations unit in Birmingham, Alabama had received a tip about the alleged plotback in April 2023.
Messages between an online user named “cattree” and the admin of a dark website, Online Killers Market, were given to investigators, court docs reveal. Online Killers Market, as its name implies, is a hitmen for hire website; however it’s widely known that such websites are almost guaranteed to backfire on those attempting to actually hire an assassin, and Online Killers Market has previously been accused of being a sham.
Investigators claim screenshots showed that “cattree” had ordered a murder for hire in early January.
“Cattree” had shared the name of the victim, identified in court docs as J.W., her address, photos and roughly $10k in Bitcoin, investigators say. The murder for hire description reportedly said: “It needs to seem random or accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation. She recently moved in with her new husband.”
Investigators say Sasser, under the name “cattree”, had placed several messages on Online Killers Market over the course of months. The criminal complaint alleges, “cattree” posted a message, “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,” the criminal complaint says she added.
Investigators alerted local law enforcement in Prattville, Alabama, where J.W. lived and sent police to her home. The victim immediately named “Sasser as a suspect” when she was notified of the alleged threat. J.W. told police Sasser was a hiking friend of her husband’s before he moved to Alabama. Her husband, meanwhile, told investigators he had met Sasser on dating website Match.com; he said the suspect had assisted him with a hike on the Appalachian Trail.
Court docs also claimed Sasser traveled to the couple’s Alabama residence after learning they had become engaged last fall.
According to J.W., her car seemed to have been keyed and she had been the recipient of “unpleasant phone calls” from an unknown person using an electronic voice disguise. Court docs describe the calls as “threatening” but were untraceable. The suspect has also been accused of tracking the couple through fitness app Strava, via their Garmin smartwatches.
“Ultimately, the plan was unsuccessful. Sasser was arrested, and her home searched,” said a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Tennessee this week. “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.”
Speaking with WBIR after the sentencing, Sasser’s attorney said the incident was the report of a “breakdown of massive proportion” — adding that his client was remorseful and “she wants [the victim] to be able to move on with her life.”
