US man hires ‘hitmen’ to silence noisy neighbors

NEW YORK CITY — Federal agents arrested and charged a New York man with murderfor-hire earlier this week. If convicted, he could face 30 years in prison, according to a report in The Washington Post.

The alleged murder scheme that initially targeted a Washington Heights superintendent would eventually expand to three targets and would drain every last cent from Joel Rosquette’s bank account. All the while, FBI agents were onto his every move and decision.

Joel Rosquette had despised his neighbors across the hall who were always throwing parties in the small Washington Heights flat in Manhattan.

Other tenants had tried to get the noisy neighbors evicted, but the superintendent wouldn’t allow it. Rosquette was convinced that the superintendent once had an “affair” with a woman who lived in that flat and turned a blind eye to the parties, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Fed up, Rosquette came up with a solution. He would have the superintendent “taken care of,” the complaint said. He asked a guy he knew for a referral for someone who did “that kind of work.”

The acquaintance set him up with a hit man who could get the job done for $10,000, with a $1,000 down payment.

“Let me tell you something, Rick,” the acquaintance told him in June. “Once I get the ball rolling . . . there’s no coming back . . . . You want me to kill this guy, you sure?”

“110 per cent yes,” Rosquette responded, according to the complaint. So it was settled.

But his acquaintance had other plans. He was a confidential informant for the FBI. And the hit man was an undercover federal agent.

“In the end, he was fooled by the merits of his own plan,” FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney Jr. said in a statement.