This morning while I was once again watching Today (yes, I’ve noticed I start off with this line a lot), they ran a story about a woman who used Craigslist to try and hire someone to kill her lover’s wife.
Apparently 49-year-old Ann Marie Linscott is married and lives in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area. She met her lover, who lives in Oroville, California, while taking a course over the Internet. They engaged in a cyber affair, but when she tired of being the other woman she got the bright idea to use Craigslist to change all that.
That’s pretty disturbing in and of itself, but what got me was police advised the intended victim to leave the country for her own safety. Why? Because even though the ad has now been taken down, someone might have taken it seriously enough to follow through on.
Let’s talk about that ad. It was, as FBI agent Drew Parenti said, “innocuous.” It was posted as “freelance” work and when people responded Ms. Linscott then went on to explain she was looking for “silent assassins.” Three people that police know of responded to the ad and when they decided it was not a joke called police. Kudos to them.
But what if there’s someone else out there who wasn’t that responsible? Police think they know everyone who responded, but… That’s the problem. There is a but. The wife could still be a target and they have no way of knowing with 100% certainty. Scary!
I believe a marriage can survive an affair, but can it also survive being thrown into the national spotlight because of an attempted murder-for-hire plot too? That’s a lot to swallow.
I’ll be curious to hear the poor wife’s thoughts on all this, if she ever speaks publicly. Did she know about her husband’s cyber affair with Ms. Linscott? Or did she get whammied with the knowledge he’d been cheating when police came to inform her her life might be in danger?
The husband is cooperating fully with police and it doesn’t look like he had any idea Ms. Linscott had taken such measures. And as far as Ms. Linscott…she will not be living happily-ever-after with her Internet lover. She’s facing federal solicitation for murder felony charges because she used an interstate facility to perpetrate her crime.
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