A Westminster woman was arrested Tuesday after trying to hire an undercover state trooper to kill her husband, police say.
Mary L. Gates, 46, of the 1400 block of Pinch Valley Road, had tried to hire a hit man twice to kill her husband, Kevin L. Gates, 43, before police nabbed her using a trooper posing as a hit man, said Detective Sgt. Chuck Moore of the state police.
She was charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder for offering the trooper $6,000 to kill her husband, Moore said.
Kevin Gates was stunned when police told him of the plot, Moore said.
“Like anybody would be, he was shocked,” Moore said. “It?s hard to stomach.”
The hit was intended to look like a botched robbery, and Gates? husband was to be shot in the head, according to charging documents.
She provided a photo of her husband and his work schedule, police said.
In March, the documents show, Gates tried to get a neighbor to kill her husband, saying: “I?ve got to get away from Kevin and the kids. I want him dead. You have to help me.”
In November, she asked another woman to get her ex-boyfriend to help her kill her husband, according to documents.
The couple lived with their two teenage children on a few acres in a rented house, and neighbors rarely saw or spoke to them.
In the two years the family rented the house, a neighbor talked to her only once, when Mary Gates said she was going to start classes at Carroll Community College. Mary Gates did not have a job and her husband worked at night, the neighbor said.
“She doesn?t like to come out of the house,” the neighbor said. “She?s a secluded kind of person.”
The neighbor declined to give her name.
Gates is being held at the Carroll County Detention Center on $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 2 in Carroll District Court.
