Woman Tried to Hire Hitman to Kill the Wife of a Man She Met on Match.com: It Needs 'to Seem Random'

A Tennessee woman who tried to hire a hitman to kill the then-fiancée of a “hiking friend” she met on the online dating website Match.com has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, a federal judge sentenced Melody Sasser, 48, of Knoxville, to 100 months in prison, the equivalent of 8 years and four months, in a murder-for-hire plot, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Tennessee said in a release.

As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Sasser admitted to using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Sasser met David Wallace  on Match.com, in 2020, when he and his now-wife lived in Knoxville, according to a criminal complaint previously reviewed by PEOPLE.

Sasser and Wallace were “hiking friends,” according to the complaint. The two had gone on various treks together, local outlet 10 News reports.

The complaint doesn’t state whether the two were ever in a romantic relationship.

Trouble began brewing in the fall of 2022, when Wallace moved to Alabama with his wife, who was his fiancée at the time, and told Sasser the two had gotten engaged, the complaint said.

Sasser responded to this news by saying, “I hope you both fall off a cliff and die,” according to the complaint.

Sasser then traveled to Alabama and arrived at Wallace’s home unannounced, according to the complaint. 

Around that time, Wallace’s fiancée told authorities that her vehicle had been keyed and that she had started receiving threatening phone calls, the complaint said.

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Sasser was also stalking the couple by monitoring their whereabouts through a fitness app on their Garmin watches, the complaint said.

The situation turned more sinister in January 2023, when Sasser used a dark web-hosted site known as the Online Killers Market to hire a hitman to murder Wallace’s fiancée, the U.S. Attorney said in the release.

“In her communications with the site, Sasser provided photographs and location information of the victim,” the U.S. Attorney’s release said.

Sasser also requested that the killing appear “to seem random or accident.  Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation,” according to the release.

In exchange for the anticipated murder of the victim, Sasser used the internet to transmit nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency to the would-be assassins. 

What Sasser didn’t know is that the website was a scam, according to the complaint.

Sasser placed her initial order on Jan. 11, 2023, and sent a follow-up message to the site administrator in March, asking why it was taking so long to have the woman killed, the complaint said.

“I have waited for 2 months and 11 days and the job is not completed… does it need to be assigned to someone else? Will it be done? What is the delay?” she wrote, according to the complaint.

Sasser was arrested in June 2023 after a grand jury indicted her and charged her with using of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, according to a 2023 release.

During a search of her home, law enforcement uncovered a journal listing out several other hitman websites, a handwritten account of communications with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of U.S. currency underneath a sticky note listing a Bitcoin address, according to the release.

The journal “was a hidden rage that she kept secret for months,” federal prosecutor Anne-Marie Svolto told the judge during the sentencing hearing, local outlet 10 News reports.

Sasser’s attorney said his client is remorseful about what she did. 

“She wants [the victim] to be able to move on with her life,” her attorney Jeff Whitt said, 10 News reports.

“Her actions were the result of a breakdown of massive proportion,” attorney Jeff Whitt said, according to 10 News.

After Sasser serves her prison sentence, she faces three years on supervised release.

Sasser must pay an agreed upon amount of $5,389 in restitution to the victim.