Walter Mitchell knew his odds were better if his victim didn’t testify.
What he didn’t know was the hit man he hired to kill her was an undercover detective with the Maryland State Police.
Mitchell, 53, entered an Alford plea Thursday to a 20-year-old, first-degree assault and pleaded guilty to an obstruction of justice charge for trying to harm the victim.
Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Michele Jaklitsch sentenced him to 17 years in prison and five concurrent years for obstructing justice.
Defense attorney Gary Proctor said he’d planned to argue to a jury that Mitchell’s sexual relations with the victim were consensual, but his client took a last-minute plea because “the hit man stuff would sink the ship.”
The victim, who was 23 at the time of the incident, said she felt justice was finally served.
“I’m glad it’s over with so I can try to put everything behind me now,” she said.
The victim was walking Nov. 27, 1988, along Ritchie Highway when she accepted a ride from Mitchell, who brandished a large knife and drove to a wooded area near Church Street where the sex offenses occurred, according to charging documents.
Mitchell wasn’t linked to the attack until 2006 when he was arrested in Carroll County for indecent exposure and required to give police a DNA sample, which matched the 1988 crime.
He was charged in May 2007 for the cold case and held at the Anne Arundel Detention Center on Jennifer Road while awaiting trial in August.
But three weeks before Mitchell’s trial, detectives received a July 17 letter from Johnny Schaechtel, an inmate at the detention center who said Mitchell asked him how to hire a hit man.
Schaechtel also worked as a narcotics informant for Anne Arundel police before he was arrested, said veteran private investigator Sharon Weidenfeld, who had been working on Mitchell’s case for Proctor.
State police sent an undercover trooper posing as a hit man to meet Mitchell on July 24 at the detention center, where Mitchell said he “wanted something to happen” to the victim’s house or vehicle that would “give her the message not to show up for court,” the prosecutor said.
[email protected]
