GRAND RAPIDS -- Ann Marie Linscott's online ad simply offered a free-lance gig.

The devil was in the details: To collect $5,000, "silent assassins" would have to kill her lover's wife in California.

"It doesn't get, in my view, any more serious -- or chilling -- than that," U.S. District Judge Janet Neff said Wednesday.

Linscott, 49, of Rockford, a married mother of two, was sentenced by the judge to 12 and a half years in prison, the maximum under federal sentencing guidelines, for trying to hire someone to kill her romantic rival.Her target was the wife of a man she met in cyberspace while taking an online college course.

Prosecutors said Linscott, whose husband, John, still supports her, quickly latches onto others, including a sheriff's deputy she met in jail, and was willing to have someone killed to get what she wanted.

The murder-for-hire plot came to light in 2007 after Linscott posted a free-lance job on craigslist.com. In response to e-mails, she said she was looking for "silent assassins."

"She wanted the woman dead," Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Mekaru told the judge. "She told the (FBI) agent, 'I wanted her dead.'"

The victim, who asked to be identified only by her initials, C.Z., said in court last month that Linscott's solicitation for murder stole her sense of security. C.Z. was also victim of a Molotov cocktail left in her bedroom, but Linscott was not charged.

The victim left her family and career for three months and had to be hospitalized for stress. But she and her husband are trying to preserve their marriage.

TIMELINE

2005: Ann Marie Linscott has a two-day tryst in Reno with a California man she had met online. She visits him the next year in California.

April 2007: A Molotov cocktail, connected to a fuse, is found in the bedroom of the California man's wife. It does not go off.

November 2007: Three people respond to Linscott's advertisement on craigslist.com for a free-lance job. She e-mails back that she wants the woman killed.

January 2008: Linscott is charged in murder-for-hire plot of her lover's wife in California.

Wednesday: Linscott is sentenced to 151 months in federal prison on three murder-for-hire charges.

Her husband and Linscott met online three or four years ago, and Linscott traveled to California and Nevada for a sexual rendezvous, eventually making plans to move to the West Coast, records said. The prosecution said Linscott has a pattern of troubling behavior.

While locked up last summer, she wrote a love letter to a deputy at the Newaygo County Jail, and wanted to be returned there after being transferred to Montcalm County Jail, Mekaru wrote in court records. In a letter filed in court, she wrote to the deputy that she missed him.

"I wish you'd send me a card with a little note letting me know you're thinking of me and missing me. I need something to hang onto! ... I think of you often every day."

In 1997, she "fixated" on a co-worker, who filed for a personal-protection order after she began stalking him.

Mekaru described Linscott as "bright," but said she "uses the same skills and abilities to manipulate others."

Her lawyer, Matthew Santamauro, said she has borderline personality disorder, and needs treatment for mental illness.

In her statement to the judge, Linscott, a massage therapist, talked about her loyalty, work history, volunteerism and efforts to help others. She has served in the U.S. Coast Guard and has a criminal-justice degree.

The judge was not impressed.

"I continue to believe, even here today, she does not accept responsibility," Neff said. "She does not understand what she did."



E-mail John Agar: jagar@grpress.com