Tennessee
Tennessee woman attempted to hire hitman to kill wife of man she met on dating website
Melody Sasser, 48, attempted to hire an online hitman to kill the wife of a man she met on the dating website Match.com. (Knox County Jail)
A Tennessee woman attempted to hire an online hitman for close to $10,000 to kill the wife of a man she met on the dating website Match.com, according to prosecutors.
Melody Sasser, 48, used a dark website known as “Online Killers Market” to hire a hitman for a “job” last year, according to court documents.
That website allegedly offers hitman-for-hire services, hacking, kidnapping, extortion, disfigurement by acid attack and sexual assault, WVLT reported.
Sasser, using the username “cattree,” messaged the website administrator about hiring a hitman. She paid $9,750 in Bitcoin to do the “job” and emphasized that it needed to appear like an accident to avoid suspicion of criminal activity.
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“It needs to seem random or accident, or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation. She recently moved in with her new husband,” Sasser wrote to the administrator.
The woman she wanted dead, identified only as JW, lives in Prattville, Alabama, with her husband, identified as DW, who met Sasser on Match.com prior to his marriage.
DW said Sasser helped him with a hike along the Appalachian Trail before he moved to Alabama and married his now-wife.
Sasser had left threatening voicemails on JW’s phone using technology to disguise her voice, court documents allege.
Court documents say Sasser talked with the “Online Killers Market” administrator over the course of two months over frustrations about the “job” not being completed.
“I have waited for 2 months and 11 days and the job is not completed,” she wrote to the administrator. “2 weeks ago you said it was been worked on and would be done in a week. the job is still not done. does it need to be assigned to someone else? will it be done? what is the delay? when will it be done, [SIC].”
During her communications with the website, Sasser provided photographs and location information of JW, according to court documents.
Sasser was allegedly able to track the couple’s whereabouts by using an app called Strava, which connects to Garmin watches to share fitness data.
At one point, she notified the “Online Killers Market” administrator when JW had left her home for a two-mile walk.
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But the plot ended up unsuccessful, and it led to Sasser’s arrest and her home being searched.
Law enforcement found during the search of her home a journal listing several other hitman websites, a handwritten account of communications with the “Online Killers Market” and a stack of cash underneath a sticky note with a Bitcoin address.
A federal grand jury indicted Sasser in June of last year for the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
Sasser entered a plea deal on Wednesday, and she was sentenced to 100 months in prison and must pay more than $5,300 in restitution to the victim.
Read more on FOX News.
Former Tennessee baseball pitcher Garrett Stallings was called up by the Milwaukee Brewers on June 30.
Stallings, 28, likely will make his major league debut against the Cincinnati Reds on June 30 in the second game of the Brewers’ four-game homestand.
Stallings played at Tennessee from 2017 to 2019 in the early years of Tony Vitello’s stint at the Vols’ head coach. He earned a starting role as a freshman and became the ace by his junior season.
In 2019, the Los Angeles Angels selected Stallings in the fifth round of the MLB draft. He bounced around in the minors before landing firmly in Triple-A with the Norfolk Tides, and later the Brewers’ affiliate Nashville Sounds, in 2024.
Stallings posted a 3-3 record with the Sounds in 2026 with a 3.45 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 62⅔ innings.
He will be the 54th player in Tennessee history to reach the major leagues and the 12th since 2020. He will join left-hander Garrett Crochet (2020); right-hander Ben Joyce (2023); infielder Andre Lipcius (2023); IF Trey Lipscomb (2024); outfielder Jordan Beck (2024); RHP Seth Halvorsen (2024); RHP Chase Dollander (2025); RHP Blade Tidwell (2025); INF Christian Moore (2025); OF Drew Gilbert (2025); and RHP Chad Dallas (2026).
Dallas made his debut for the Toronto Blue Jays on June 4.
Wynton Jackson covers high school sports for Knox News. Email: wynton.jackson@knoxnews.com
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BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The poet laureate of Tennessee has just died. Margaret Britton Vaughn was 87-years-old. Friends knew Vaughn as hilarious, talented, and deeply unique.
Visiting Bell Buckle, Tennessee over the years, I’ve just found this little place has so many artists. A proud addition to that is Vaughn.
“When Maggi was your friend, you knew you had a friend,” said longtime friend Annie Rooney. “It wasn’t if you’re rich or poor or have four matching tires on your car, she was your friend.”
Going way back, Vaughn was a songwriter for some country greats.
“Loretta Lynn, yes!” said friend Carla Webb.
To understand the uniqueness of Vaughn, listen to this story.
“Maggi says, ‘honey, you wanna go to the movies with me?’” friend Billy Phillips remembered.
Phillips was nine when he and Vaughn became friends and took a trip to the Carpi Theatre in Shelbyville.
“When I get into the car, there were 200 empty boxes of chocolate bunny rabbits!” Phillips laughed.
“She loved chocolate,” Rooney agreed.
“It couldn’t be hollow milk chocolate,” Phillips continued. “It had to be solid milk chocolate.”
That was just one of many loves. One of the times I got to talk to Vaughn was in 2023. She was selling eclectic things she’d collected. They included a typewriter built out of clothes hangers and a lamp made of forks and spoons.
“Maggi had a lot of stuff!” Phillips said.
She’d call around to antique shops.
“Got anything that looks like me, honey?” Rooney laughed, remembering Vaughn’s calls.
Talking to Vaughn, you came to understand something. She had a deep appreciation for the art and the artist who made it. That’s something that sprang from Vaughn being an artist herself.
“My mother looked down and said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to be a nurse?’” Vaughn told me in 2023. “I said, ‘no, momma. I wanna be a songwriter and a poet.’ People say, ‘Maggi, these books. You’ve written my life.’”
“Maggi had front porch books, not coffee table books,” Webb said.
“She was a poet of the people,” Rooney continued.
Vaughn took on prejudice in her work. She also wrote about all things she loved.
“She covered rural life, southern things,” Phillips said.
That writing carried her to become the poet laureate of Tennessee in 1995. The next year, she wrote Tennessee’s bicentennial poem.
“I gave her her last kiss the other day,” Webb said.
“I’m on the verge of tears,” Phillips added. “This will be a real gut punch.”
Asking around town, people seemed to agree on their favorite of Vaughn’s works.
“Is That You Mama?” Phillips said, naming one of Vaughn’s poems.
Webb read me an excerpt of the poem. It ended with these lines;
“Well, mama, I’m okay now. You tell the Lord I said hi. Was that you, mama, that just kissed me bye?”
“Maggi was a true original, and Bell Buckle was proud to call her our own,” Phillips said.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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