Global Courant
A Tennessee woman is accused of hiring a bitcoin hit man to kill the wife of a man she met on Match.com, a federal complaint alleges.
Environmentalist and avid hiker Melody Sasser, 47, was arrested May 18 for the depraved plot to kill her romantic rival.
The names of the victim and her husband have been redacted in court documents, but the Daily Beast, which first reported the story, identified the Alabama couple as Jennifer and David Wallace.
Sasser met the retired Department of Energy emergency manager and Air Force veteran on Match.com, and they became hiking buddies in Knoxville, Tennessee. However, the relationship reportedly soured when he moved to Alabama and told her he was engaged.
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Melody Sasser, right, is accused of hiring a hit man to kill David Wallace’s wife. (LinkedIn/Facebook)
It’s unclear if Sasser and David Wallace were ever romantically involved, but she didn’t take the news well and drove nearly five hours to the couple’s home in Prattville, Alabama, to confront them.
“I hope you both fall off a cliff and die,” she told them in the fall of 2022, the indictment says. Around the same time, Jennifer discovered wounds in the side of her car and received a deluge of threatening phone calls.
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Sasser, who went by the name “cattree,” posted a hitman on the dark web’s “Online Killers Market” on Jan. 11, giving Jennifer Wallace’s name, address, and a $9,750 bitcoin deposit for the job.
“It must seem random or an accident or drugs plant, don’t want a long investigation,” Cattree reportedly wrote in the post with a photo of the target.
Melody Sasser is accused of hiring a hit man to kill David Wallace’s wife. She met him on Match.com and the pair became hiking buddies. (Facebook)
The bizarre site “claims to offer hitman-type services as well as related services at the request of the potential customer, such as hacking, kidnapping, extortion, acid attack mutilation, and sexual assault,” the complaint said.
Sasser, who had worked for the Pilot Flying J truck stop company before her arrest, exchanged several messages with the site’s administrator expressing her frustration at the delay.
“(I) waited 2 months and 11 days and the job is not done. 2 weeks ago you said it was being worked on and it would be done in a week. The job is still not done,” said Sasser on March 22. .
Six days later, she sent another message detailing Jennifer Wallace’s whereabouts. “Yesterday she was working from home and took a 2-mile walk on her own,” she wrote.
READ THE FEDERAL COMPLAINT ACCUSING MELODY SASSER OF TRYING TO HIRE A HITMAN TO KILL A ROMANTIC RIVAL
A foreign law enforcement agency alerted the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to the assassination plan on April 27.
HSI alerted local police who assigned a detail to protect the couple. Jennifer Wallace told police she used a fitness tracking app called Strava, which is likely how Sasser kept tabs on her whereabouts.
Global Courant
The complaint says Sasser purchased four bitcoins from a Coinhub ATM which was then sent to an “Online Killers Market” digital wallet. She used her personal mobile number to complete the transactions, according to the filing.
Sasser has been detained since her arrest. Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rebecca Rosenberg is an accomplished journalist and author of books with a focus on crime and criminal justice. Email tips to rebecca.rosenberg@fox.com and @ReRosenberg.
