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A man in jail tried to hire a hitman to kill the witnesses in his court case but the guy was actually a federal informant

Mar 6, 2021, 01:48 IST
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Detained immigrants play soccer behind a barbed wire fence at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, on February 20, 2018.REUTERS/Reade Levinson
  • A Virgin Islands man tried to hire a hitman from prison to kill witnesses.
  • Delroy Thomas, 30, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and must pay a $3,000 fine.
  • In his attempt to hire a hitman, Thomas was unaware that the person he was speaking to was actually a DEA informant.
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A man from the US Virgin Islands attempted to hire a hitman while in jail against witnesses who planned to testify against him in a trial, according to a release from the Department of Justice.

Unbeknownst to him, the "hitman" was a federal informant.

Delroy Thomas, 30, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a $3,000 fine, and three years of supervised release for the murder-for-hire plot against witnesses. Thomas was already in jail for a second-degree aggravated rape charge.

According to the DOJ, Thomas called a fellow inmate at the Golden Grove Correctional facility multiple times to see if they could help him eliminate two witnesses from an impending superior court case. Prosecutors allege that Thomas told the inmate that he had planned the hit for eight months and that there were "no ifs, ands, buts, or changing of his mind" and that if the person would not help him, he would find someone else to kill the witnesses.

During the phone calls, Thomas gave the inmate the home addresses and images of the witnesses to assist in getting the job done.

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But Thomas didn't know that the inmate he trusted for help was a confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration who recorded the phone calls.

Once arrested, Thomas told investigators that while he "may have discussed eliminating witnesses," he only did it when he angry and had no real murder for hire plot. He agreed that the person in the recordings was in fact, him, but said that the informant and inmate that he trusted had threatened him into participating in the calls and that Thomas was merely "going along" with the plan.

After searching Thomas' prison cell, officers found a knife and three cell phones. Prosecutors presented evidence in court of text messages from the phones to other people who said that Thomas was "planning a massacre" and that if he was not let out of prison, he would enlist someone to kill a witness and their family.

After carrying out Thomas' final sentencing, a judge in the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands dismissed Thomas' pending rape charge.

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