Woman is charged in Tennessee federal court in murder-for-hire plot targeting the new wife of a former friend after the couple moved to Alabama and got married

Environmental compliance specialist Melody Sasser is accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill the new wife of her hiking buddy that she met on Match.com

Sasser, 47, is accused of threatening David Wallace and his wife, Jennifer, allegedly tracking her rival using a fitness app

The app would send real-time updates and information to a assassination website

Sasser provided the website with about $9,750 worth of bitcoin on January 11, along with information on the target and criteria the hitman must meet to mask the trail

The assassination website was a fake and eventually tipped off police

Sasser was arrested on May 18, and remains in custody pending a court appearance on Thursday

She faces up to 10 years in prison, if convicted of the murder-for-hire charge

Melody Sasser, [photo], is accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill the new wife of her hiking buddy that she met on Match.com. She allegedly, paid $9,750 in bitcoin on January 11, along with information on the target and criteria the hitman must meet to mask trail

A middle aged woman was arraigned in court in Tennessee in a murder-for-hire plot targeting the new wife of her hiking buddy who she’d met on Match.com.
Prosecutors said the 47-year-old environmental compliance specialist Melody Sasser, tried to hire a hitman to kill the wife of her hiking buddy David Wallace.
Sasser is accused of threatening Wallace and his wife, Jennifer, allegedly tracking her rival using a fitness app to send real-time updates and information to a fake assassination website that eventually tipped off police, the Daily Beast reports.
The suspect, who worked for truck stop company Pilot Flying J, provided the website with about $9,750 worth of bitcoin on January 11, along with information on Jennifer and criteria the hitman must meet to keep the trail cold, according to court documents filed in Knoxville, Tennessee, federal court.
According to court documents, in her notes on the now-defunct, ‘Online Killers Market’ site, under the username ‘Cattree,’ Sasser stipulated that ‘This needs to appear to be random or accident. Or plant drugs, don’t want a lengthy investigation’.

David Wallace had met Sasser on Match.com and gone on multiple hikes with her before he got engaged to another woman and moved away to Alabama

Sasser and Wallace met in 2020, when he and his future wife also lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, according to the complaint.
The pair appeared to have been matched on the online dating site sometime that year, and although it remains unclear what the exact nature of their relationship was, the two were close as they hiked together in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, southeast of Knoxville, all through 2020.
Wallace, who works for the US Department of Energy, told police that Sasser even helped him tackle the Appalachian Trail that year- she “assisted” him by “making reservations at known hostels and other rest points and took care of his vehicle,” Wallace says in his complaint.
But their relationship soured in 2022 when Wallace left for Prattville, Alabama, with his then-fiancée, Jennifer.
The couple allege that Sasser tracked them down. She showed unannounced, to confront them at their new home. David told her that he and Jennifer were getting married, Sasser did not take the news well. “I hope you fall off a cliff and die,” Sasser told the homeowners, according to the court documents.

When the website said the hitman declined the job because it “was too risky,” Sasser, an avid hiker, allegedly used the Strava workout app to track and post her target’s hiking routes and routine which she then posted on the dark web as part of her solicitation for the hit on Jennifer

Prosecutors claim that by December Sasser became active on the Online Killers Market website, often venting her frustration that no hitman had quickly taken the job.
Angered by the delay in the contract pickup, Sasser allegedly took her complaints to the site administrator: “Waiting for 2 months and 11 days and the work is not done. 2 weeks ago you said that on this The work has been done and will be completed in a week,” the user Cattree wrote on March 22.
“The work is still not completed. Does it need to be assigned to someone else. Will it be done. What is the delay, when will it be done.”
When she was told the hitman declined the job because it “was too risky,” Sasser allegedly stalked Wallace’s wife using the Strava workout app.
‘Catree’ was sending updates on Jennifer’s precise location, along with the dates and times of her movements, to the bogus murder-for-hire service she found on the dark web.
The complaint adds that after Sasser’s visit Jennifer’s car was vandalized. She also began receiving ‘threatening phone calls,’ apparently from someone using computer generated phone numbers that are ‘untraceable’ .

On May 18, Sasser [photo], was arrested on charges related to murder-for-hire, a month after feds were made aware of the threats against her former buddy’s wife. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted

The Department of Homeland Security was notified on April 27 about the hit placed on Jennifer, with investigators working with the couple to provide protection and track down the person who wanted her dead.
Officials followed the money from Catree’s account and subpoenaed Coinhub, which operates Bitcoin ATM machines and linked back to Sasser, according to court documents.
Police also identified Sasser’s 2020 Hyundai Santa Fe near Jennifer’s office in Birmingham on November 9 and 14, 2022.
Sasser was arrested on May 18, and remains in custody pending a court appearance on Thursday. If convicted of the murder-for-hire charge, she could face up to 10 years in jail.