This week, a Texas woman was given a nine-year sentence in federal prison for trying to pay a hitman $10,510 in Bitcoin on the “dark web” in order to kill her boyfriend’s girlfriend.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release that Michelle Murphy, 58, entered a guilty plea to one count of murder-for-hire in December. She was told her destiny on Thursday.
After her release from jail, she will be placed on supervised release for a period of two years, and the federal Bureau of Prisons was advised by the court to enroll her in mental health treatment programs.
The case, which dates back to last summer, is described in the complaint. Murphy used an ATM to exchange cash for cryptocurrency, which she then transmitted to a Bitcoin wallet she believed belonged to the person who had been paid for the murder.
The case was first made public in August 2023 when Homeland Security Investigations learned from a source that an unidentified suspect had attempted, via the dark web, to have someone known as “Intended Victim-1” killed in exchange for cash.
Murphy stated that she and O.G. were “in a relationship” on her Facebook page. The agent also saw multiple pictures of a dog that looked to be a “Mudi” breed on Murphy’s Facebook page.
“The person who tried to hire a hitman to murder the woman used a dark web moniker ‘LISTMUDI, further linking Murphy to the murder-for-hire,” according to the court documents.
Agents noticed O.G. and Murphy at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on September 21, 2023, and they began to close in on the culprit.
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After the couple was led to an interview in an office, Murphy confessed that she learned that O.G. was seeing someone else and that she had transferred Bitcoin to hire someone to kill her, according to court records.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers concurred during Thursday’s sentencing hearing that the “hitman” who took money from Murphy probably never meant to kill anyone, according to the authorities.
