The FBI suggested this was the first time a murder-for-hire case began with text messaging. The woman wasn’t exactly offering the world for the murder: an above-ground swimming pool and $200 in gas money. She could have at least thrown in a couple inflatable rafts for the pool in the whole deal.
By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune reporter
CHICAGO — An Indiana woman offered an undercover FBI agent posing as a professional hit man her above-ground swimming pool and $200 in gas money to kill an ex-boyfriend who wanted custody of one of her children, federal authorities in Chicago charged Tuesday.
Heidi Friedburg, 30, and her current boyfriend, William C. Alexander, 31, of New Carlisle, Ind., were arrested Monday as they unloaded Friedburg’s disassembled swimming pool to seal the deal with the would-be hit man in a south suburban parking lot.
Ross Rice, the FBI spokesman in Chicago, said he believed it was the first murder-for-hire case that began with text messages — and without a doubt the first time a pool had been offered as payment.
“How low can we go?” said Rice, who indicated the swimming pool had been seized as evidence.
Shortly after her Illinois ex-boyfriend filed a paternity lawsuit, Friedburg asked a former co-worker via text message to help find a hit man, the criminal complaint stated. The co-worker contacted the FBI the same day.
