MURDER
FOR HIRE
Before the Trigger Gets Pulled
05/23/07
For
a professional hockey player, it was an unusual
goal: to knock off your own agent using a
paid assassin.
But St. Louis Blues center Mike Danton
never got the shot to carry out his plan.
The man he tried to hire for the hit contacted
us and agreed to document Danton’s
plans. After pleading guilty in 2003, Danton
is now serving out his seven-year sentence.
It was yet another case of “murder
for hire,” one of the FBI’s
many longstanding beats. We’ve been
in the business at least as far back as
Murder Inc., the notorious band of professional
hit men who murdered hundreds of people
for the mob in the 1930s and ‘40s
until being brought down by the FBI and
its law enforcement partners. Murder for
hire became a specific federal crime in
1958.
Today, we typically work between 70 and
90 cases a year, including 78 in fiscal year
2006. The investigations range from spurned
lovers out for revenge to more organized
gangs and crime groups that want to take
out rivals and snitches.
Our ultimate goal, as in all our
work, is prevention: to keep the
hits from ever happening. We work most
cases jointly with local authorities through
our violent crime task forces; we bring
to the table the ability to tap into federal
racketeering laws as well as our undercover
and surveillance capabilities and staple
of informants.
Here are a few of our recent murder-for-hire
preventions:
1) The
plotter: A
man from Beverly, Massachusetts
The
target: His estranged
wife, 7-year-old daughter, and mother-in-law
The
hired gun: Another
man who he met in jail; after both were released,
the plotter asked the man or his friend to
carry out the crimes.
How we caught
him: The
ex-prisoner was troubled by the plan, particularly
the murder of the young girl. He told his
mother, who called us. He also provided us
with a diagram drawn for him by the Massachusetts
man showing the wife’s house and location
of the bedrooms.
Result: The
plotter was charged in federal court on May
19.
2) The
plotter: Devaughan
Smith of Kenner, Louisiana
The
target: A fellow drug
associate
The hired gun: Another
associate, who was offered crack cocaine
to do the job
How we caught him: The
man Smith wanted to hire contacted us; he
then worked undercover and recorded Smith
talking about the plot.
Result: Smith
was found guilty in March and faces up to
10 years on the charge.
3) The
plotter: Paul
William Driggers of Idaho
The
target: His ex-wife,
who had accused him of child molestation
and illegally possessing a gun
The
hired gun: A California
man who Driggers invited to Idaho and then
offered $10,000 for the murder
How
we caught him: The
California man called the Idaho State Police,
which contacted us. The man later wore a
wire to gather evidence in the case, which
was investigated by the multi-agency North
Idaho Regional Violent Crime Task Force.
Result: Driggers
was convicted in February.
To
read more about our many efforts to address
violent crime in local communities, see
our Major
Thefts/Violent Crime webpage.