The Dark Side of Love

It's a tale of deceit and desperation, of a woman who crossed the line from devotion to destruction. Melody Sasser, a 48-year-old woman from Tennessee, pleaded guilty to hiring an online hitman to kill her rival, the wife of a man she met on a dating website. The chilling story unfolded when Sasser used a dark website called "Online Killers Market" to find a killer, paying nearly $10,000 in Bitcoin for the job. Sasser's path to desperation began when she met her new husband, DW, on Match.com. She had helped him on a hike along the Appalachian Trail and even claimed to have been a significant part of his life before he married JW, his current wife. But as time passed, Sasser's feelings of jealousy and resentment grew. She started tracking the couple's locations using an exercise app called Strava and even left threatening voicemails on JW's phone, using an app to disguise her voice.

The hitman was assigned, and Sasser waited patiently, growing increasingly impatient as the weeks went by. She messaged the administrator of the dark website, demanding to know when the job would be done. But her patience was wearing thin. In a fit of rage, she wrote, "I have waited for 2 months and 11 days and the job is not completed. Does it need to be assigned to someone else? Will it be done? What is the delay?" Law enforcement had been monitoring Sasser's activities and discovered a journal at her home, listing a slew of other hitman websites, handwritten communications with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of US currency with a note attached listing a Bitcoin address. The evidence was overwhelming, and Sasser pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire charges.

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