According to
Polk County deputies, a man awaiting trial on charges that he molested a girl younger than 12 also tried to hire a hit man to kill the victim and two others.
Richard Palmer — awaiting trial on charges that he molested a girl younger than 12 — didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison, so he asked a cellmate for help, investigators said.
He wanted to hire someone, offering $15,000 and a “sports car” as payment, according to the Polk County Sheriff ’s Office.
The job, investigators said: Kill the girl — and two women who are witnesses in the case — and burn down their house.
Palmer, 26, now faces a greater possibility of life behind bars, accused of solicitation to commit murder and arson. Hoping for a hit man, he instead hired an undercover detective, officials said.
“Just when you think this man can’t get any lower, after being arrested for doing horrible things to a child, now he’s trying to hire someone to kill her and the witnesses,” Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement.
Officials said the plot began to unravel quickly after Palmer approached a cellmate, asking if the man knew anyone willing to kill the girl. “Palmer told the cellmate that he didn’t want his intended victims to come to court, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison,” sheriff ’s spokesman Brian Bruchey said in a statement.
The cellmate notified law enforcement, giving investigators a hand-drawn map to the victim’s home — which included landmarks and an interior layout of the house — according to the Sheriff ’s Office. The detective posing as a hit man spoke to by phone Palmer, the agency said, who promised a car and partial payment in advance. He later arranged to wire $100 to the hit man, Bruchey said.
During the call, Palmer used the phrase “X Out” to refer to the planned killings, investigators said. In a recorded conversation with his cellmate, he also admitted drawing the map, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Records show the molestation case dates back to Febuary 2013. A girl, who was younger than 12 at the time, said she awoke to find Palmer next to her in bed with his hand inside her panties, court records show. Palmer has been jailed since September, when he was accused of battering a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest. That arrest led to his bail being revoked in the molestation case, the Sheriff ’s Office said.