murder for hire en Alleged murder-for-hire-seeking widow walks <p>The woman <a href="90040/murder-hire-albemarle-woman-charged-foiled-plot">accused of seeking a hitman</a> to kill her late husband's girlfriend after she was omitted from her spouse's obituary has agreed to an Alford Plea that gives her no jail time, even as she admits that the Commonwealth had enough evidence to convict her. NBC29 has <a href="">the story</a>.</p> <p>Linda Faye Currier McDaniel, 62, was arrested April 17 after the would-be hitman came forward. A related charge, solicitation to commit arson, had already been dropped. No one was killed or injured.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice murder for hire Online only Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:55:21 +0000 hawes 100135 at Love triangle? Murder-for-hire certified to grand jury <p>The woman <a href="">accused of seeking a hitman</a> to kill her late husband's girlfriend has waived her preliminary hearing, so her solicitation-to-commit murder charge goes to the grand jury. Linda Faye Currier McDaniel, 62, had also been charged with solicitation to commit arson, but that charge was dropped during the June 23 hearing in Albemarle General District Court.</p> <p>McDaniel was arrested April 17 in the alleged murder-for-hire plot and was later released on bail.</p> <p>The plot came to light when a man acquainted with both the alleged intended killer and her alleged intended victim notified the latter that he been approached to make the hit.</p> <p>The arrest came just about a week after the April 11 death of Jessie Edward McDaniel, 62, to whom Mrs. McDaniel wrote that she was married for 32 years in the guest book of Mr. McDaniel's <a href=";pid=150256332">obituary</a>. The obituary itself, however, omits any mention of Mrs. McDaniel and instead describes as "the love of his life" Joyce Broderick, the alleged intended victim.</p> <p>The man who may serve as state's key witness is William "Billy" Marshall, according to Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jon Zug. Marshall was approached by Mrs. McDaniel with an offer to kill Broderick and burn down her mobile home on McCauley Court. No fire was ever set, according to Zug, who noted that the witness is in jail on an unrelated matter.</p> <p>Broderick and McDaniel sat on opposite sides of the courtroom during the brief hearing, and both declined to comment afterwards.</p> <p>The murder solicitation charge goes to the grand jury August 1.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice linda mcdaniel murder for hire News Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:19:47 +0000 lisa 91763 at Shemorry's farewell: Hitman-hiring husband gets 9.5 years <!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><div class="captionLeftLandscape"><a href=""><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-24685" title="news-shemorry-couple-horizontal" src="" alt="news-shemorry-couple-horizontal" width="325" height="306" /></a><strong>Patrick S. Shemorry in happier times with estranged wife Starla Knight.</strong><small><br /> FACEBOOK PHOTO</small><small></small></div> <p>With his weeping mother looking on, former Charlottesville realtor Patrick S. Shemorry was sentenced Wednesday to nine and half years in prison for <a href="">hiring a hitman</a> to kill his estranged wife.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">"This is such a terrible crime," said Judge Norman Moon as he deliberated, adding that "but for the grace of God" a woman would be dead and 28-year-old Shemorry would have been facing life in prison or capital punishment.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">That "grace" came in the form of the hired hitman, identified in a <a href="">defense pre-sentence memo</a> as Shemorry's former friend Michael Allen Terry, who, instead of carrying out the killing, went to authorities with recordings of Shemorry discussing his desire to have his estranged wife killed.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">"“It’s a f***ing war, and she’s just a casualty," Shemorry said on an <a href="">audio recording</a> played in court in September as Shemorry entered the guilty plea. "Kill Starla; she’s f***ing poison.&#8221;<br /> </p><p class="whitespace"><span style="float:none;"></span>The former Boy Scout struck a different tone during today's sentencing hearing, saying that what prosecutors described as his "cold" and "emotionless" demeanor on an FBI videotape as he receives the news of his wife's demise was actually a front.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">"I did hide my feelings from Michael Terry," Shemorry said in a quiet, shaking voice minutes before he was sentenced. His apparent calm on the video, masked "soul-wrenching dread" and "self-loathing," he said.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">"I would have been unable to continue walking this earth with blood on my hands," said Shemorry, who turned to apologize to his mother, Danette Shemorry of Pasco, Washington, seated two rows behind him in the courtroom. "I will spend the rest of my life attempting to atone for all I've done."<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">Earlier in the hearing, Danette Shemory wept on the stand as she recalled teaching a younger Patrick and her other three children "to know right and wrong." Watching his anguished mother testify, the bearded and bespectacled prisoner wearing the gray and black striped suit of the Central Virginia Regional Jail, where he's been held since his June 23 arrest, covered his mouth with a hand.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">Assistant U.S. attorney Nancy Healey asked Judge Moon to issue a 10-year sentence, the maximum suggested in the plea agreement, and she disputed the <a href="">pre-sentence memo</a> that painted Terry&#8211;- who the <em>Hook</em> has been unable to reach&#8211;- as the instigator.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">"That is at odds with the excerpts played in court," said Healey, noting that Shemorry had not implicated Terry when arrested.<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">Healey also criticized the memo for naming Terry. (In it, Terry's described as a conman using his cousin's identity and who is currently incarcerated at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail and facing trial next year in Charlottesville Circuit Court on more than a dozen felony charges relating to the alleged identity theft.)<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">Defense attorney Andrea Harris defended the memo as a tool for "better understanding" and cited letters not only from Shemorry's family but from the intended victim's family&#8211;- even from Knight herself&#8211;- "universal in that they all express shock," said Harris, asking Moon to consider a nine-year sentence given Shemorry's record, clean but for two misdemeanor use-of-drug convictions. This crime, Harris said, "is not a reflection of who he really is."<br /> </p><p class="whitespace">Shemorry will serve his sentence at the medium security federal penitentiary in Sheridan, Oregon, closer to his Washington-state-based family, and will have three years probation following his release.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice Art hitman murder for hire Patrick S. Shemorry Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:51:54 +0000 courteney 69240 at Drugs and duplicity: Shemorry to be sentenced, blames hit-man <!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><div class="captionLeftLandscape"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-19276" src="" alt="news-shemorry-couple" title="news-shemorry-couple" border="0" height="487" width="325" /><strong>Happier times: Patrick Shemorry and his wife, Starla. He was later <a href="">tape-recorded</a> ordering her killed.</strong><small> FACEBOOK PHOTO</small><small></small></div> <p>Former Charlottesville realtor Patrick S. Shemorry may have pleaded guilty to hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wife, but a new <a href="">10-page pre-sentencing memo</a> suggests the crime was a "complete aberration" from an otherwise respectable life and that blame should not fall on Shemorry alone when he is sentenced next week.</p> <p class="whitespace">"Shemorry never sought out someone to kill his wife," states the December 2 federal filing by Shemorry's public defender, Andrea Harris, explaining that the key witness was less a hired hitman than a veteran conman&#8211;- one who "volunteered his services."</p> <p class="whitespace">The witness&#8211;- known to Shemorry as Darius Hampton, but actually operating under a cousin's name&#8211;- was bad news, the filing alleges, from the moment Shemorry and his wife met him in February 2009 while the couple was seeking drugs during a trip to New Orleans.</p> <p class="whitespace">As reported in a <a href=""><em>Hook</em> cover story</a> following Shemorry's September 22 plea hearing, Hampton falsely told Shemorry and and his wife, Starla Knight, that his fianc©e and children had been murdered and thereby won such sympathy from the couple that they invited him to move into their two bedroom condo on Jefferson Park Avenue.</p> <p class="whitespace">Shemorry, who worked for Keller Williams Realty, would eventually be heard on <a href="">audio</a> saying, "It's a f***ing war, and she's just a casualty. Kill Starla; she's f***ing poison." His filing, however, paints a more benevolent picture.</p> <p class="whitespace">The filing claims that Hampton is actually Michael Allen Terry, who deserves much blame for Shemorry's situation and that he engaged in numerous criminal acts including more than a dozen felony counts relating to the identity fraud. Terry is currently incarcerated at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail with a hearing scheduled for December 3 in Charlottesville General District Court. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.</p> <p class="whitespace">After Shemorry and Starla Knight separated in April 2009, the filing alleges, Knight moved to New Orleans alone, leaving a "distraught" Shemorry back in Charlottesville with his ersatz friend Terry in the condo. It was Terry, the filing alleges, who first suggested the killing, allegedly calling Knight dangerous and evil.</p> <p class="whitespace">While Shemorry declined to take out life insurance on his estranged wife, as Terry allegedly urged, Shemorry acknowledges that he "did eventually agree" to Terry's offer to kill her. At that point, the filing states, Terry began recording their conversations.</p> <p class="whitespace">But despite already having tape-recorded evidence of a crime in progress, the filing points out, Terry didn't immediately contact authorities. It was only after he'd accepted Shemorry's $1,200 to travel to New Orleans to find Knight and had allegedly told her of Shemorry's plot that he contacted the FBI, who set him up with a hidden camera to use when he met with Shemorry to tell him the murderous plot had been a "success."</p> <p class="whitespace"><span style="float:none;"></span>Although FBI videos show Shemorry receiving Terry's news of his wife's death with what appears to be grim "we did what we had to do" satisfaction, the filing claims Shemorry was actually "shattered"&nbsp; by the plot&#8211;- and that his remorse was evident in a written statement he gave at at the time of his arrest.</p> <p class="whitespace">"I would rather be here writing this letter in hand cuffs not knowing my future," Shemorry wrote, "than to live with her death on my conscience." The <em>Hook</em> has been unable to reach Knight for comment on her husband's words and deeds.</p> <p class="whitespace">The crime stunned not only Shemorry's friends and his colleagues, but also his family members. According to the filing, the 28-year-old Shemorry, the second of four children, had a normal childhood and enjoyed Scouting as well as camping and backpacking with his family. Following his high school graduation in 2000, he volunteered for a cancer clinic, enlisted in the Air Force, and married Knight in Williamsburg in 2004&#8211;- the same year he was convicted for two "minor use of drug" offenses, the only blemishes on an otherwise clean record.</p> <p class="whitespace">According to the filing, Shemorry's family is "in shock" at the nature of the crime to which he has pleaded guilty. Reached at her home in Leavenworth, Washington, aunt Debbie Shemorry says the young man she knew wouldn't have committed this kind of crime.</p> <p class="whitespace">"He was a joyful child and young adult; he just had a positive energy about him," she recalls. "He had a way with words and could tell a story like nobody else could."</p> <p class="whitespace">Debbie Shemorry recalls a teenaged Patrick driving "four or five hours" with his older brother to visit her and her family soon after he'd received his driver's license. "He made the effort," she says, expressing difficulty reconciling the family-oriented teenager with the man who currently sits behind bars awaiting sentencing.</p> <p class="whitespace">"It doesn't make sense," she says.</p> <p class="whitespace">The filing, however, attempts to make some sense of it.</p> <p class="whitespace">"Absent Terry's influence in Shemorry's life," it reads, "it is unlikely Shemorry would have committed this offense."</p> <p class="whitespace">Citing his meager criminal history and statistics that depict an unlikely recidivist, Shemorry's filing requests nine years behind bars, one year less than the maximum provided in his plea agreement. Federal Judge Norman Moon will consider that request on December 9.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice hitman murder for hire Patrick S. Shemorry Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:02:30 +0000 courteney 69305 at