Family Law

Wife?s Murder-for-Hire Plot Foiled by Ex-Cop Investigator

By ckramer

As a part of preparing for a divorce from her estranged husband, Long Island mother of four Susan Williams hired a private investigator to do some digging on her husband in search of incriminating evidence.

According to ABC News, the investigator that she met with in 2008, Joe La Bella, was a retired police detective in the NYPD now working for a private company called East Coast Investigative Services. La Bella’s investigation did not come up with anything that satisfied his client.

To his surprise, however, she contacted La Bella again through a friend, saying that she wanted to meet with him again.

The client and the investigator did meet again, at a diner, to discuss where the case might go. According to La Bella, Williams vented for a time about her husband and about the divorce proceedings.

Then, in a strange turn, Williams asked La Bella if he knew anyone who could have her husband “seriously injured.” This idea, to hurt her husband with hired help, soon evolved into a plan to have him murdered. La Bella then, as he says it, went into “detective mode,” and pushed Williams to discuss what exactly her plans were, eliciting the murder plot.

La Bella contacted the district attorney’s office soon after the meeting, and with their assistance he set up another meeting with Williams. Under audio surveillance, the ex-detective assured Williams that he could get her in touch with a hit man.

According to Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, Williams could not bring herself to say the actual words when pushed about whether she wanted her husband dead.

According to Rice: The conversations that this defendant had were very clear. In the beginning, it was ‘I want him seriously injured.’ And that turned into ‘I want him gone. I want him gone.’ At one point, when the person says to her, ‘do you want him dead?’ She says, ‘I can’t say that word,’ but she nods her head up and down.

A few days later, Williams met with a person she thought was a hit man. In fact, it was an undercover Nassau County police detective. The hit would cost $20,000, he told her, and provided her with a number of chances to back out of the arrangement. Williams, instead of bailing, gave the detective a photo of her husband, his work and home addresses, his license plate number, and a $500 down payment for the hit.

Williams was ultimately arrested by the Nassau County police and charged with second degree conspiracy and criminal solicitation in the second degree. She pleaded not guilty, and she faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

The allegations were made during a bond hearing, in which a judge denied a request to lower the bail set for Williams, which is currently $1 million.

Joe La Bella, meanwhile, was perplexed by Williams’ brash inquiries. I was a little taken back, he said, that she would ask me something like that when she knew I was a retired detective.

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on March 15, 2010 (boomark / email).