A Tennessee woman faces federal charges after authorities say she tried to hire someone to kill a woman who married a man she had met on Match.com.
Federal documents say 47-year-old Melody Sasser was upset when David Wallace, a hiking buddy she met on the dating website Match.com, told her he was engaged to another woman and moving to Alabama.
Read the full federal complaint near the end of this story.
The federal complaint quotes a Homeland Security Investigation Special Agent who says Sasser hired a hitman through the dark web-hosted site "Online Killers Market" in January of this year. The agent says a foreign law enforcement agency tipped him off to the plot in late April.
The complaint says the “order for murder” was made by an account linked to Sasser during the investigation and had a description that said the hitman was to kill a woman in Prattville, Alabama.
“It needs to seem random or accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation,” the complaint says the description reads, going on to include even more in-depth descriptions of the victim and her husband’s vehicles and jobs.
Agents in Birmingham, Alabama, informed the local police and the victim of the threat to her life.
The complaint says the victim told her husband, retired Department of Energy emergency manager David Wallace, and Sasser, an environmental compliance specialist, were hiking friends in Knoxville before he moved to Alabama.
After he moved, the complaint says Sasser traveled to his Prattville home unannounced in the fall of 2022 after he told her he was engaged to the victim.
In response to the news, the complaint says Sasser told him she hoped he and his new wife both “fall off a cliff and die.”
The complaint says the victim was subjected to other forms of harassment, including damages to her vehicle and threatening phone calls.
Throughout the investigation, the complaint says agents linked Sasser to the account that made the “order for murder” on “Online Killers Market” through her Bitcoin purchases that were used to send money to the account. While the deposits listed in the document only total approximately $3,758.67, the total of the “order” was $9,750.
The complaint says Coinhub ATMs take photos of of every user during each transaction, and photos from an ATM linked to specific transactions matched Sasser’s Tennessee driver’s license picture and her open source Facebook profile picture.
What's more, the complaint says the phone number used to identify the customer at the ATM also matched the phone number Sasser listed on her driver’s license and in her contact information with Knoxville Utilities Board.
Read the full federal complaint below:
Sasser is scheduled to appear in federal court Thursday.