Woman charged in claimed murder-for-hire plot against attorney boyfriend
The fiancée of a Wisconsin lawyer is in jail in lieu of a $250,000 cash bond, standing accused of offering $1,000 and sexual favors to a police informant to shoot the lawyer to death at his law office.
Charged in the claimed murder-for-hire plot against the unidentified attorney is Jessica Anne Strom, 33, the Wausau Daily Herald reports. If convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree intentional homicide, she could get as much as 60 years.
She allegedly drew a diagram of the would-be victim’s law office for the informant and told him she wanted him to make a bogus appointment with the attorney and then “blow his brains out and walk out,” the newspaper reported.
The informant is a licensed pilot who met Strom several years ago when both were taking criminal justice courses. He told police last week that she had asked him to kill the lawyer, then met with him at a Wausau restaurant the next day, where she provided more details and said she wanted the informant to fly the lawyer’s body to Door County for disposal after his death, according to the criminal complaint.
A prosecutor told a judge in the Marathon County Circuit Court case that authorities have audio and video evidence against Strom.
Strom’s lawyer, James Runyon, denied the allegations at a preliminary hearing Monday, the Wausau Daily Herald reported in a later story. He said Strom was in a “multiyear, colorful relationship” with the lawyer that was generally a rocky one. “The reason there are courts is that there are two sides to every story,” Runyon said.
The Smoking Gun provides a copy of the police report, with some names redacted.
A judge and a special prosecutor from outside the county have been brought in to deal with the case because the lawyer is well-known in the local court system, WSAU reports.
Hat tip: Above the Law.
