A New York man pleaded guilty to orchestrating a complex murder-for-hire plot against his romantic rival, which included plans to feed the victim’s body to hogs and a bizarre warning delivered via a dead goose on a doorstep.
Jeal Sutherland, 57, pleaded guilty to using an interstate commerce facility in a murder-for-hire scheme, according to a press release issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York on May 14.
According to the Justice Department, Sutherland attempted to arrange the murder of a man who fathered a child with Sutherland’s then-girlfriend. He agreed to forgive the debt of a man he hired to carry out the murder, according to the office, and contacted a man he believed to be a Pennsylvania hog farmer about disposing of the victim’s remains by feeding them to the animals.
According to the Justice Department, the farmer and prospective hit men were both FBI informants.
Sutherland also hired a different man to place a dead Canada goose on the doorstep of his intended victim’s mother and stuff a threatening message into its beak in the weeks leading up to the murder, according to the press release.
Sutherland had already victimized his romantic rival’s mother on several occasions. According to a criminal complaint obtained by Law & Crime, the 57-year-old paid a man to set fire to her car in order to prevent her from testifying during a custody hearing. The man would also become an FBI informant in the case, according to the document.
The informant told the agency that Sutherland hired him as a “enforcer” for a number of vengeful tasks against people who allegedly owed his employer money. According to the complaint, the informant also informed the feds that Sutherland planned to kill the father of his then-partner’s child in January, when the perceived adversary would be released from a New York State prison.
The informant began recording his conversations with Sutherland regarding the planned murder. According to the complaint, the informant told Sutherland in December that “I have a van I can rent from a nun for about $250 — we can take him to a farm and let the hogs eat him.”
Sutherland initially told this informant that his then-girlfriend wanted to take part in the hit, saying in one recording that she wanted him “strapped to a chair so she can hit him with a baseball bat,” according to the complaint.
But he also noted that she would “fold like an accordion” if questioned, and he later began to distance himself from the crime.
According to the complaint, he stated in a subsequent recording that he “[didn’t] want to know anything about [the killing],” but did want photographic proof that his victim had died. Sutherland stated in another conversation that he would “probably be in Myrtle Beach” on the day of the planned attack, according to the document.
According to the complaint, Sutherland, his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s child, and the informant went to a bowling alley together on Jan. 26. The informant told Sutherland that he needed to be paid before carrying out the killing. The two drove from the bowling alley to the home of one of Sutherland’s relatives, where Sutherland gave the informant “an E-ZPass transponder, a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon for the hog farmer, and $1,450 cash.”
The following day, the agency arrested Sutherland and charged him with using an interstate commerce facility in a murder-for-hire scheme. He pleaded guilty on May 14, and his sentencing is set for September 22.
Sutherland faces up to ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year supervised release period, according to the release.