PLANNING VIOLENCE: MURDER FOR HIRE (crime story)

 While violent acts always seem irrational on the surface they may actually involve careful planning and thought. Nowhere are elements of preparation and design more apparent than in elaborate plots involving murder for hire. Take the case of Paul William Driggers, 54, an Idaho man who offered $10,000 for someone to kill his ex-wife because he was facing child molestation and gun charges and because he wanted his children back. Driggers contacted an associate in prison and asked to be put in touch with a person who could do a job for him. He got the name of a third man who was then living in California. In April 2006, using the name “Huey,” Driggers contacted the California man

and induced him to come to Idaho to discuss a “business proposition.” Driggers and the man met at a Coeur d’Alene restaurant and discussed a number of illegal things they could do, including counterfeiting, producing precursor chemicals for the manufacture of methamphetamine, identity theft, and false charity campaigns. After the two left the restaurant, Driggers told the California man that he wanted his ex-wife killed and offered the man $10,000 for the murder. Instead of committing the crime, the California man contacted state police. When the two later met in a Lowe’s parking lot, the California man was wearing a wire. Driggers showed him photographs of his ex-wife, and the two discussed the details of the murder, including using walkie-talkies to communicate, and how to dispose of the body. Driggers was convicted of attempted murder on February 23, 2007. The Drigger’s case is not unique. Richard Kaplan, a former New Brunswick official who plotted to kill his wife, was already serving a federal prison sentence for accepting more than $30,000 in bribes. While in prison he pursued a murder-for-hire plot through a fellow inmate. Rather than commit the crime, the inmate alerted authorities and became a cooperating witness in an FBI undercover investigation. Kaplan wanted his wife dead because of money issues and the belief that she was planning to get a divorce. Not long after arriving at the prison, he began telling a fellow inmate that he wanted to fi nd someone who could kill his wife and make it look like an accident. He told the inmate he was willing to pay $25,000 for the murder.

LOOTING THE PUBLIC TREASURY (crime story)

After graduating from UCLA, Albert Robles served terms as mayor, councilman, and deputy city manager of South Gate, California, an industrial community about 12 miles outside downtown Los Angeles. Soon after Robles became city treasurer in 1997, he plotted to rule the city purely for his own benefit. He even proclaimed himself “King of South Gate” and referred to the city as his “fiefdom.” Once in power, Robles got involved in a number of convoluted illegal schemes, including:

❚ Using the city’s treasury as his “private piggy bank for himself, his family, and his friends” (according to acting U.S. Attorney George Cardona), costing South Gate more than $35 million and bringing it to the verge of bankruptcy

❚ firing city hall employees at will, replacing them with supporters who had little experience

❚ Recruiting and bankrolling unqualified local supporters for city council until he controlled the council 

❚ Threatening anyone who stood in his way (suspiciously, one of his adversaries on the city council was shot in the head)

Robles and his corrupt cronies then cooked up schemes to line their own pockets with the public’s cash. In one such scheme, Robles coerced businesses to hire a financial consultant, Edward Espinoza, in order to win various city contracts, including senior housing and sewer rehabilitation projects. As part of this plan, Robles and Espinoza set up a shell corporation that raked in some $2.4 million—more than $1.4 million of which went straight into Robles’s pockets. He used part of the money to buy a $165,000 beach condo in Baja for his mother; he also forked over $55,000 for “platinum membership” in a motivational group. In another scheme, Robles steered a $48 million refuse and recycling contract to a company in exchange for more than $30,000 in gifts and campaign contributions. In February 2003, Robles was targeted by a federal grand jury looking into the handling of federal loans and grants. FBI and IRS investigators pored over city records to uncover his illegal schemes. The citizens of South Gate ultimately voted Robles and his cronies out of office (but not before he racked up huge legal bills at the city’s expense), and he was convicted at trial in July 2005. Two of his business associates—including Espinoza—also went to prison. Robles’s illegal acts were the product of careful plotting and planning. They were motivated by greed and not need. To some criminologists, stories like these confirm the fact that many crimes are a matter of rational choice.

Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Corruption in City Hall: The Crooked Reign of ‘King’ Albert,” January 8, 2007