Georgia Woman Pleads Guilty to Murder-for-Hire Charge
| U.S. Attorney’s Office December 06, 2011 |
NORFOLK, VA—Enid Albertha Collins, 48, of Lawrenceville, Ga., pleaded guilty today in Norfolk federal court for her role in a murder-for-hire plot targeting her ex-husband.
Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, made the announcement after the plea was accepted by United States District Judge Arenda Wright Allen. Collins faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison when she is sentenced on April 20, 2012.
According to court documents, Collins contacted a Hampton man in April 2011 and solicited him to procure a hitman to kill her ex-husband, a Virginia Beach resident. Collins and her ex-husband have twin 16-year-old daughters for which her ex-husband has primary physical custody, and Collins had been ordered to pay child support. After Collins solicited the procurement of a hitman, she returned to Georgia, from where she conducted a series of phone calls to finalize the arrangement. The hitman contacted local authorities, became a cooperating witness, and recorded several phone conversations with Collins. The conversations revealed that Collins wanted her ex-husband killed after he delivered the daughters to her for their summer vacation at a pre-arranged location in Concord, NC. She specifically instructed that her ex-husband was to be murdered while he traveled back to Virginia Beach from Concord, NC on July 1, 2011. Collins agreed to pay $1500 for the services and to send $400 for the purchase of a handgun to be used in the killing. Collins was arrested by the FBI on July 1, 2011, at the Cracker Barrel in Concord, NC.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Virginia Beach Police Department. Assistant United States Attorney Darryl J. Mitchell is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.
A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.justice.gov/usao/vae. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on https://pcl.uscourts.gov.