Florida mom tries to hire hitman on parody website to kill her 3-year-old son, police say
A South Florida mother has been arrested after trying to rent a hitman on a parody website to have her 3-year-old son killed, according to authorities.
A judge on Wednesday ordered Jazmin Paez, 18, to stay away from her son. The Miami-Dade resident was released Thursday morning from the county’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $15,000 bond, court records show.
Paez used a fake name to fill out a web form on rentahitman.com in which she listed her son’s name and age, uploaded a photo of him, provided an address and selected Thursday as the date she wanted him killed, her arrest report says.
“She was in a hurry to get this done,” Bob Innes, the website’s owner, told the Miami Herald.
The attorney representing Paez didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
How it all went down
The saga began Tuesday morning, Innes said, when the woman completed the website’s “service request form,” which asks users whom they want killed, when, where and why. According to Innes, his website also asks users’ contact information and records their IP address, a unique number that identifies each computer.
Innes then contacted the Miami-Dade Police Department, and one of their detectives texted Paez pretending to be a hired hit man. According to her arrest report, the mother accepted to pay $3,000 to have her son killed.
Paez was arrested late Tuesday night, police say, and confessed to putting a hit on her son to get her ex-boyfriend back after he broke up with her because she had a child. The mother told police that the man told her to get rid of her son.
After she consented to have her cellphone searched, detectives say they found a text where she told her ex-boyfriend “it’s being taken care of,” referring to her son.
Paez has been charged with soliciting murder in the first degree and unlawful use of a communication device. The arrest was first reported by NBC Miami.
“I’m happy to be able to save lives,” Innes said.
Rent-a-Hitman helps nab suspects
This isn’t the first time Rent-a-Hitman has helped authorities locate suspects accused of trying to order killings or attempting to get hired as a hitman.
In June, a 17-year-old was arrested and charged in Iowa after police say she used the website to request a hit on a young child, the Des Moines Register reported.
And in April, federal agents say that an Air National Guardsman from Tennessee submitted an employment inquiry to the same webpage indicating that he was interested in obtaining employment as a hit man.
How did Rent-a-Hitman begin?
Originally created in 2005 to advertise a cyber security startup company, the firm failed and over the next decade it received many inquiries about murder-for-hire services, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Tennessee.
The website’s administrator then converted it to a parody site that contains false testimonials from those who have purported to use hit man services, and an intake form where people can request services. The website also has an option for someone to apply to work as a hired killer.
Rent-a-Hitman never fulfills the requests, and often cooperates with law enforcement.
“I’m just happy to help,” Innes said.
This story was originally published July 20, 2023 at 1:03 PM.
