C.L Martin 
A Tennessee woman agreed to plead guilty to attempting to hire a hitman for more than $9,000 on the dark web.
Melody Sasser, 47, of Knoxville, Tennessee, admitted she accessed the dark web murder-for-hire site “Online Killer’s Market” and attempted to hire a hitman to kill the wife of a man she had met on a dating site.
HSI investigators received information regarding Sasser’s murder-for-hire plot from a foreign law enforcement agency in April 2023. The information included records of messages exchanged between Sasser and the administrator of Online Killer’s Market.
Sasser placed the order on January 11, 2023. She provided the site’s admin with the victim’s photo, name, and address. She also asked the admin to make the hit look like an accident. She deposited $9750 in Bitcoin into the site’s escrow as payment for the hit.
HSI investigators established that the bitcoin used to pay for Sasser’s order originated from a Coinhub Bitcoin ATM machine. Information acquired from Coinhub revealed that Sasser purchased Bitcoin from the ATM on four occasions.
During the purchases, Sasser provided a phone number registered under her name. The photos captured by the ATM during the transactions further identified Sasser as the orchestrator of the murder-for-hire plot.
A search of Sasser’s home resulted in the discovery of a piece of paper with the victim’s information written on it. The investigators also found a journal with a list of links to dark web murder-for-hire sites, a record of communication between Sasser and the admin of Online Killer’s Market, and deposits she made to the site.
On November 14, 2023, Sasser agreed to plead guilty to one count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. She faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
