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Caught on video: Fake hit man and Muskegon's widow wannabe discuss husband's murder | MLive.comClipped from: http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2013/07/caught_on_video_muskegons_wido.html |
Caught on video: Fake hit man and Muskegon's widow wannabe discuss husband's murder
MUSKEGON, MI – Julia Charlene Merfeld said she wanted her husband killed because "it was easier than divorcing him."
That explanation came in a meeting with a man Merfeld thought she was hiring to do the murder.
Merfeld, 21, of Muskegon didn't know the man was really an undercover police detective, or that she was being recorded on a hidden videocamera."When I first decided to do this … it's not that we weren't getting along," she says on the video. "But … terrible as it sounds, it was easier than divorcing him.
"You know, I didn't have to worry about the judgment of my family, I didn't have to worry about breaking his heart, all that stuff like this. It's, like, how I got a clean getaway."
Another motive, authorities have said, was the 27-year-old husband's $400,000 life insurance policy . Julia Merfeld told the fake hit man he'd be paid $50,000 from the proceeds, in a series of weekly $9,000 installments to avoid suspicion from her bank.
Merfeld pleaded guilty June 27 to solicitation to murder.
Her husband and intended victim asked that she get no jail time at all, the sentencing judge said in court at the time of her guilty plea. Instead, Chief Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti committed to cap her minimum sentence at six years. The maximum can be anything up to life in prison, depending on Marietti's decision at her sentencing July 30.
After Merfeld's guilty plea, the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office released videos of two meetings between Merfeld and a Michigan State Police detective. The recordings were released to MLive and the Muskegon Chronicle at a reporter's request.
Each conversation lasted about 11 minutes. Each took place in the fake hit man's vehicle parked outside the Harvey Street Meijer store in Fruitport Township. They were recorded on April 9 and 10, 2013. Merfeld was arrested soon after the second meeting and has been lodged in the Muskegon County Jail ever since.
The recordings are almost startlingly sharp. In them, the baby-faced young wife, wearing a Batman sweatshirt in the second meeting, discusses her murder plan in a matter-of-fact manner. Occasionally she laughs. She calmly discusses possible dates for the killing, checking her calendar on her Batman-stickered smartphone.
At one point late in the second conversation, she briefly appears to be having second thoughts. After the supposed hit man tells her he'll fire two bullets into her husband's head and that "he's gonna die," she smiles uneasily, says "it makes me sad," and at one point says softly, "It's a bad idea for me."
But within seconds she's back on track, saying "OK" after the fake killer tells her the killing can't be called off "after today." And seconds after that she interrupts him to ask "what happens if you get caught?" He assures her he'll "take the hit" and not give her up as long as she pays him, to which she replies, "absolutely."
The man who tipped off police, her co-worker Carlos Ramos, told MLive earlier that Merfeld offered him $50,000 to kill her husband. Instead he called police, who then set up the meetings that led to her arrest.
Merfeld and her husband had recently moved to Muskegon from New Jersey as the result of a job transfer for the husband. They have two young children who were staying with relatives in New Jersey at the time of the April meetings.
At no time in the conversations does Merfeld express any hostility toward her husband or complain of any action of his. She stresses that she doesn't want him to suffer.
When the "hit man" asks whether she wants him to use a gun or a knife, she says, "unless you can do it painlessly breaking his neck."
Early in the first conversation they discuss her preference that the victim be killed outdoors rather than in their West Forest Avenue home, for a couple of reasons. For one, Merfeld wanted a friend to move in with her after his death, and she didn't want the woman to be scared of moving into the house after it had been broken into.
Also, she says, a shooting indoors "would be messy in the house," then laughs.
By the second meeting, it's been decided the murder will be done inside the Merfelds' home while Julia is at work. Her husband will be in the pantry, she tells the "hit man." The hired killer will steal items such as a computer to make it look like a robbery.
For the second meeting, Merfeld brings along and hands the "hit man" a sheaf of notes he has requested, including directions to the home and a floor plan, then a photo of her husband, saying, "that's him." She also hands the purported killer a $100 bill as a down payment to show she's serious, as he had requested in the first meeting.
As the final conversation ends, the supposed killer shakes Merfeld's hand and wishes her luck. She replies with a smile just before she exits the vehicle:
"Thank you. Good luck to you, too."
Email John Hausman at jhausman@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter at @johnshausman
