KNOXVILLE, Tenn — Federal prosecutors are recommending a Knoxville woman get "the high end" of punishment for her efforts to hire a killer on the dark web to eliminate someone she perceived as a romantic rival.
Melody Sasser, 48, faces sentencing Sept. 18 before U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan in federal court in Knoxville.
Sasser is being held in the Knox County jail system. She entered a plea agreement with the government in late 2023 on a count of murder for hire.
The crime carries a prison term of up to 10 years, records show.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne-Marie Svolto, in a Sept. 4 sentencing memo to the court, detailed all the steps Sasser took to plot the death of a woman identified as "J.W." The woman was married to a man in Alabama with whom Sasser had once hiked in East Tennessee.
Sasser was fixated on the man and the woman who ended up becoming his bride, authorities allege.
Svolto said Sasser wanted to "terrorize" the victim and ultimately ensure she died. She was ready to do whatever it took to kill J.W., the prosecutor wrote.
It was important to Sasser, federal authorities allege, that the murder look like an accident.
"It needs to seem random or accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation," a recovered message from her states, according to the government.
Sasser paid nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency after finding a site on the dark web called "Online Killers Market". By then she'd already left voice-modulating, harassing phone calls for the victim.
"When the would-be hitmen were not moving fast enough for the defendant, she offered to pay them more money to complete the job," Svolto wrote.
The plan wasn't carried out.
An Alabama police department learned of the murder-for-hire order and officers went to interview the target and tell her about the threat to her life.
J.W. mentioned Sasser as a suspect. She said that Sasser and her husband were hiking friends in Knoxville before he moved to Alabama, and Sasser had gone to Alabama in the fall of 2022 unannounced, after learning about the man's and woman's engagement.
When authorities searched Sasser's Knoxville home, they found "a stack of U.S. currency underneath a sticky note that listed a Bitcoin address," the plea agreement states. It was next to a piece of paper listing personal information about the victim.
Veteran Knoxville attorney Jeff Whitt represents Sasser. He's filed paperwork under seal this month ahead of sentencing on Sasser's behalf, records show.