Melody Sasser (Facebook)
A 47-year-old woman in Tennessee has been arrested for allegedly trying to hire a hitman from the dark web to kill the wife of a man she met on Match.com.
Federal authorities took Melody Sasser into custody on May 16 and charged her with one count of murder for hire, court documents reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, the federal investigation into Sasser began in late April, when authorities received information indicating that an adult woman had been named as a target in a murder-for-hire plot. The information, which came from a “foreign law enforcement agency,” allegedly showed messages from a person using the name “cattree” on a dark web hosted site known as the Online Killers Market, or “OKM,” to solicit the murder of a woman married to retired Air Force veteran David Wallace.
The name of the alleged target in the deadly scheme is redacted from court documents.
OKM, a now-defunct scam site, claimed to have more than 12,000 registered members across the globe and purports to allow users to submit detailed “orders” for future murders, federal authorities say. The person submitting the “order” then receives a quote from an alleged hitman who can then be directly messaged.
Investigators say Sasser placed the order for a hit on Wallace’s wife on Jan. 11, 2023 in Prattville, Alabama. The hit “needs to seem random or an accident. [O]r plant drugs,” Sasser allegedly wrote, adding: “[D]o not want a long investigation.”
Sasser’s alleged murder order included a photo of the purported target, the location of her office, her car and license plate number, and details about the home she shared with Wallace — including a comment about the couple’s dogs.
“[T]hey have three dogs that bark and jump but nice dogs,” Sasser allegedly wrote, perhaps to reassure the would-be contract killer not to fear the Wallace family pets.
By March, however, the “job” had not been completed, and messages appear to indicate that Sasser was growing frustrated (typos in original):
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.
Sasser had allegedly provided an initial payment to the hitman in Bitcoin even before placing the order, the criminal complaint says. Authorities followed the money trail from the Bitcoin transfers and learned that Sasser had purchased the digital currency and transferred the funds to potential killers on OKM, per the affidavit.
Federal authorities travelled to Wallace’s home and interviewed his wife, who supposedly named Sasser as a potential person who might want her dead. She said that her husband and Sasser had met on Match.com when they both lived in Tennessee and became “hiking friends,” according to the criminal complaint. However, she said that Sasser became enraged when Wallace informed her that he was engaged to be married and moving to Alabama.
Wallace’s wife told authorities that after the move, Sasser allegedly showed up uninvited at the newlywed’s home in the fall of 2022 and issued various threats.
“I hope you both fall off a cliff and die,” she allegedly told Wallace at the time, according to the criminal complaint. Also around that time, Wallace’s wife reported having her car vandalized with a key. She also started receiving “unpleasant phone calls from a person utilizing an electronic device to disguise their voice,” the complaint says.
Wallace’s wife also confirmed that she and her husband used a fitness tracking app called Strava. Authorities say that based on the information provided to the potential hitman, including exact times and locations of Wallace’s wife, they believe that Sasser had been tracking Wallace’s wife through the app.
If convicted, Sasser faces up to 10 years in a federal prison. She is currently scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.
Sasser’s attorney, M. Jeffrey Whit, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment from Law&Crime.
“I have been representing citizens accused of crimes for 32 years across this state, and this is certainly not the first prosecution I’ve faced alleging some type of murder for hire scheme,” Whit said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “Our investigation is in its infancy as I was only retained within the last week. As such, I find it premature to comment on the facts of this case until such time as each of the allegations have been vetted and such future responses are in accordance with our state rules restricting public comments during pending prosecutions.”
Read the criminal complaint, below.
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