Fla. Teen Allegedly Stole Parents' Debit Card to Fund Murder-for-Hire Plot Against Them
A Florida teenager is facing charges after she allegedly stole her parents’ debit card and used the money she withdrew to pay two different people to kill them in a failed murder-for-hire scheme, say officials.
On Tuesday, Alyssa Hatcher, 17, of Umatilla in Central Florida, was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal solicitation for murder, a Lake County Sheriff’s Office arrest affidavit shows.
After being taken into custody, she was transported to the Lake County Jail, where she was processed before being turned over to the Department of Juvenile Justice.
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Authorities learned of Hatcher’s botched plan when a student at Umatilla High School told a Lake County Sheriff’s resource officer that Hatcher had given her friend “a lot of money” to find someone to kill her parents, the affidavit obtained by PEOPLE claims.
Investigators quickly discovered that Hatcher had allegedly stolen her parents’ debit card and completed two transactions — one for $503.00 and one for $926.40, “later identified as money given to two different individuals to kill her parents,” the affidavit says.
Hatcher’s boyfriend told investigators he’d seen Hatcher early Monday morning at a “known drug house” where she told him she wanted to murder her mom and stepdad, the affidavit says.
During a recorded interview with investigators at her home, Hatcher allegedly admitted to the plot, according to the affidavit.
She allegedly revealed that she used $100 to buy cocaine and gave $400 to a friend to for someone to commit the murders, the document alleges.
She went on to say that “since the act was never carried out, she gave the other $900 to a black male to kill her parents,” the affidavit says.
Upon learning of the allegations against their daughter, her parents, a nurse and a police lieutenant, told authorities they wanted to prosecute for the charges, the affidavit says.
The parents were not identified in the affidavit. Police have not yet identified a motive for the alleged murder-for-hire plot.
Lake County Sheriff’s Sergeant Fred Jones told local station WFTV, “The parents are good people, outstanding citizens. This was just somebody who, for whatever reason, just didn’t want her parents around.”
Confirming that Hatcher’s parents wanted to press charges, Jones told local station WOFL-TV, “When it comes to something like that, I cannot imagine the shock you would be in as a parent knowing that this is my daughter – what my daughter intended to do.”
Saying it was a “sad case,” Jones went on to tell WOFL-TV, “I couldn’t even imagine something like that.”
Hatcher had spent some of her high school career on the cheerleading team, her Instagram account shows.
In June, the teen posted a picture of herself with the caption, “Ruthless.” In another, she wrote, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
