Bourbon, a Hog Farm and a Nun’s Van: Man Charged in Bizarre Murder Plot
The New York Times
Jeal Sutherland, of Colonie, N.Y., hatched a deadly scheme with a convicted killer who was an F.B.I. informer, court documents say.
The price of murder can vary.
In the case of an upstate New York man charged this week with hiring a convicted killer to dispense with a rival, it was a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, $250 to rent a van from a nun, $200 for gas and $1,000 to feed the victim’s body to the hogs on a Pennsylvania farm.
Those were the bizarre details of the murder plot that the man, Jeal Sutherland, of Colonie, N.Y., is charged with hatching with a hired killer, who turned out to be an F.B.I. informer, an agent wrote in an affidavit filed in federal court in Albany on Monday.
The planned murder, of a man who shares a child with Mr. Sutherland’s romantic partner, did not happen, according to the federal authorities. But Mr. Sutherland and the informer discussed the plot in several recorded conversations, the affidavit says.
Mr. Sutherland, 57, was in the Albany County Jail Tuesday night after pleading not guilty to a federal murder-for-hire charge before Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart. He ordered that Mr. Sutherland be held until a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
A lawyer representing him, Andrew Safranko, did not respond to a call seeking comment. He told The Times Union, “I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
