- Alright, I’ll hire you to kill this person. Do you take AmEx?
Not that we can claim to be experts on the subject, but we’d assume hiring a professional killer is pretty expensive. But apparently some of them are willing to give you a payment plan.
Claudia Carrion, from Allentown, PA, has been arrested with criminal solicitation. She’s been charged with attempting to hire an undercover detective to take out her husband.
According to a criminal complaint filed against Carrion, 44, she had been looking for a hitman. The cops got whiff of her intentions from an informant and conducted an underground operation on June 10.
The secret agent contacted Carrion and told her he’d be willing to do the hit. During their discussion, she told him why she wanted her husband dead, alleging domestic abuse and multiple mistresses.
Carrion offered the pretend-assassin $4,000 for the job, but soon admitted she couldn’t pay the sum up front. After some negotiations, they came up with a credit system.
Carrion would pay $100 right there and then. The remaining $3,900 would be paid over 39 installments, $100 per week.
As soon as Carrion handed the hundred bucks to the cop, she received handcuffs on her wrists.
Guilty or Framed?
After they arrested Carrion, the cops learned something interesting. In an interview, she confessed that this wasn’t the first time she had tried to get her husband killed.
Court documents tell that Carrion had contacted another would-be hitman at an unidentified point in time. However, their deal “didn’t work out,” she said.
If she’s tried to hire a killer twice, you’d imagine Carrion would have a very good reason for it. However, at least according to the cops’ current knowledge, that may not be the case.
Carrion has said that her husband abused both her and her family. However, the police haven’t found any reports confirming this to be the case.
Of course, it could just be that Carrion was too afraid to report the alleged abuse. However, her son Joshua Carrion said that he’s never witnessed any abuse.
The police haven’t said whether they’ll investigate Carrion’s claims. But why would she be trying to get her husband killed otherwise?
Well, if you ask her son, she wasn’t. Joshua Carrion thinks someone is trying to frame his mother.
According to him, Carrion helped her husband immigrate to the U.S. out of love. He doesn’t believe his mother would be the kind of person to hire a killer.
“It’s not like that. I feel like she’s getting framed,” said Joshua.
“She’s Christian, you know, like, very religious. My family – we never do harm. We’re all, you know, innocent. We don’t have no criminal records of nothing.”
He also said he is blissfully unaware of any abuse that might’ve happened.
“Never. Never. No, they was always happy, so I don’t know about that,” Joshua said when asked about his mother’s claims.
Potential for Punishment
For Carrion’s sake, we hope it turns out that someone is trying to frame her. Otherwise, she’ll be in deep trouble.
According to Pennsylvania law, criminal solicitation and conspiracy “are crimes of the same grade and degree as the most serious offense which is attempted or solicited or is an object of the conspiracy.” In other words, trying to hire a hitman carries the same penalty as actually murdering someone with your own hands.
At the lower end of the penalty scale, Carrion would be looking at up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of criminal solicitation equal to third-degree murder. At maximum, she could end up spending the rest of her days in prison.
Whether or not she could be sentenced to death is a bit of a gray area. At the moment, capital punishment is legal in Pennsylvania.
However, it has rarely been used since the 1990s and, in 2015, Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on executions. Still, some prosecutors will pursue death penalty and it is on the table for first-degree murder.