Wife in Video Breezily Plots Murder of Husband

A 21-year-old Michigan woman has pleaded guilty to trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband, all of it captured on video obtained by MLive.com. Turns out that Julia Merfield was talking to an undercover detective the whole time as she arranged to have her husband killed for $50,000. The two-part video is "bizarre precisely because on the surface it seems so ordinary," writes Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar. Consider some quotes from Merfield, who might as well be planning a trip to the mall:

• “When I first decided to do this … it’s not that we weren’t getting along. But … terrible as it sounds, it was easier than divorcing him. You know, I didn’t have to worry about the judgment of my family, I didn’t have to worry about breaking his heart, all that stuff like this. ”
• She'd prefer a shooting outdoors because it "would be messy in the house." (This struck her as funny.)
• At another point, asked for her preference between a gun and a knife, she says, "unless you can do it painlessly breaking his neck."

Maybe the most amazing part is that when she pleaded guilty, her husband asked that she get no jail time. The judge, however, says she will get at least six years at her July 30 sentencing. The maximum penalty is life in prison. Merfield hoped to cash in on a $400,000 life insurance policy. (More murder plot stories.)