Ex-wife pays ‘hitman’ with diamond ring to kill woman living with ex-husband, feds say
A woman believed her family was “ruined” by her ex-husband’s affair with another woman, and tried hiring a hitman to make her “disappear completely,” according to federal court documents.
“I just want her gone and not ruining my family no more,” the Idaho resident wrote in messages to the “hitman,” who was actually an undercover agent, last May, court documents show.
DeAnn Parkin met with the agent in June to provide a payment to have the woman killed, according to an affidavit, which says she paid with a diamond ring she said was worth $1,500, as well as $100 in cash.
When the agent, posing as the hitman, asked Parkin if she hoped her ex-husband would “come back to her” after the job was completed, Parkin said, “Yeah that would be nice,” an affidavit says.
She was arrested after the meeting, federal prosecutors said. On Jan. 9, Parkin pleaded guilty to the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, according to prosecutors.
Now Parkin, a 31-year-old Ovid resident, has been sentenced to seven years and six months in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho announced in an April 12 news release. Ovid is about a 330-mile drive southeast from Boise.
A federal defender appointed to represent Parkin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News on April 15.
Hitman sought over a ‘parody’ website
On May 23, a source alerted agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that Parkin was reportedly soliciting a murder, according to prosecutors.
The source runs a “parody” website offering murder-for-hire services, according to the affidavit.
Parkin submitted a request to make a woman “go away” over the website, the affidavit says. She included the name and address of the woman, who lived with Parkin’s ex-husband in an apartment in Wyoming, according to the affidavit.
“I would like (her) to stay away from my husband and my family,” Parkin wrote in her submission to the website, according to the affidavit, and explained the woman “helped ruin our family and broken it up with her drug abuse and her prostitution services.”
Parkin had separated from her husband two years earlier, in 2021, after eight years of marriage, according to prosecutors.
In her emails to the website’s administrator from May 14 to May 22, Parkin displayed “persistence and urgency in securing the services to murder,” prosecutors wrote ahead of sentencing.
“Take her to another continent or make her disappear completely where no one hears from her again anything to make her go aways for good please and thank you,” one of Parkin’s emails said, according to the affidavit.
On May 23, Parkin began messaging the undercover agent, believing they were a hitman, prosecutors said.
Over the messaging platform WhatsApp, she told the agent she was “willing to do anything,” about the woman and said she would make “whatever payments I can,” according to the affidavit.
Parkin also said she didn’t care if the woman were in “a six-foot hole,” according to the affidavit.
The in-person meetings
On June 6, Parkin agreed to meet the undercover agent who recorded their conversation, the affidavit says.
In discussing a method to kill the woman, Parkin suggested “whatever is easiest,” according to the affidavit.
When the undercover agent mentioned the woman’s child, Parkin was “calloused in her attitude toward the potential of (the woman’s) minor child being harmed,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
“Honestly, this may be bad of me, but I could care less if anything happens to the kid,” Parkin told the agent, according to the affidavit. “I don’t know your preference on kids.”
The next day, Parkin met with the agent again and gave the diamond ring, $100 and promised to provide further payments to kill the woman, according to prosecutors.
After their meeting ended, Parkin was arrested, the affidavit says.
She wanted to “permanently remove (the woman) from her family’s life, citing the target’s destructive behaviors, including drug abuse and negative impact on her own family due to an affair with Parkin’s husband,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum.
Parkin’s prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, according to prosecutors.
“The act of murder is in itself a heinous crime,” ATF Seattle Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Blais said in a statement. “But the act of attempting to hire someone to commit murder is that much more egregious.”
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