Hit Man

A Columbia man was convicted yesterday of trying to resolve a heated divorce and custody battle by hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill his wife.Mark Cordero, 43, wearing a suit and leg irons in Howard County Circuit Court, admits to the crime, his attorney said, but pleaded not guilty because of technical flaws in the case.Cordero, a former computer engineer for International Business Machines Corp., was found guilty by Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.Prosecutors said Cordero could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced March 31, although state guidelines recommend a sentence of four to nine years for solicitation of murder.

Mark Cordero was convicted yesterday of trying to resolve a heated divorce and custody battle by hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill his wife.The former IBM computer engineer, 43, wearing a suit and leg irons in Howard County Circuit Court, admits to the crime, his attorney said, but pleaded not guilty because of technical flaws in the case.Cordero was found guilty by Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.Prosecutors said Cordero, a Columbia resident, could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced March 31, although state guidelines recommend four to nine years for solicitation of murder.

Doctors for the defense and prosecution yesterday gave vastly different, but hardly surprising, views of the mind of Ruthann Aron.A psychiatrist hired by Aron said that taped conversations between his patient and a phony hit man prove she was mentally ill and "out in the ozone" at the time of her arrest last summer.Dr. Michael Spodak became the second medical witness for the defense to testify that Aron, 55, was not criminally responsible when she took out contracts on the lives of her husband and another man.But after the defense rested its case, a state psychologist testified that while Aron suffered from several mental disorders, she was criminally responsible for her actions.

Ruthann Aron hopped from pay phone to pay phone during the weekend before her arrest, negotiating a deal with a supposed contract killer. The tapes played at her retrial yesterday also showed she worried that her plan to have her husband and another man killed would be found out.It was 11: 10 a.m. on June 7, 1997, when Aron, a prominent developer, and the "hit man," undercover Detective Terry Ryan, first spoke. She was talking from a coin phone in the entry of a Sears store at White Oak shopping center.

Maybe it was the assault rifle with laser sight and flash suppressor that gave it away. Or the books police say they found in Ruthann Aron's car -- "How to Make a Disposable Silencer." The topper could have been the wig, floppy hat, and trench coat allegedly found in the Montgomery County politician's car.Get real. Trench coats went out with Dashiell Hammett and Columbo.Thus, Aron, a former U.S. Senate candidate, is being held without bond after being charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband and a Baltimore man.A recurring and featured crime in Maryland, contract killings are notable mainly for not working.

Ah, that ever nettlesome First Amendment, what with its stipulation that forbids the government from making any law that prohibits free speech. Just what are the limits of free speech, anyway?The debate will rage on virtually forever. Judges can't even agree. A gaggle of idiots in Boulder, Colo., known as Paladin Press published a book called "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors." The book is what it says: a treatise on how to efficiently commit homicide.One Lawrence T. Horn then hired one James E. Perry to murder Horn's ex-wife, his 8-year-old quadriplegic son and the boy's nurse.

The argument soon to be under way in a Maryland courtroom: Can a book publisher be an accomplice to murder for printing a "how-to" murder manual?Such a book, titled "Hit Man: A technical manual for independent contractors," may be on trial in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt because a hired killer named James Perry supposedly used it as a step-by-step guide to carry out a notorious triple murder in Maryland."

A former Marine -- desperate to beat rape charges -- offered a police officer posing as a hit man $3,000 to murder two potential witnesses, prosecutors say.But the man's lawyer argues that his client was "enticed" by a police informant interested in relaxing his own pending criminal charges.Those were the two arguments heard by a Howard Circuit Court jury yesterday in the trial of James Alexander Page Jr., a 27-year-old Greenbelt man charged with two counts each of solicitation to commit murder and obstruction of justice.

A former Marine told police he was depressed at the prospect of spending his life in prison when he approached a man he thought was a hired killer about slaying two potential witnesses.Prosecutors played the tape of a police confession to accompany the testimony of Cpl. Lee Lachman before a Howard Circuit Court jury in the trial of James Alexander Page Jr., 27, of Greenbelt.Page, whose Marine enlistment expired while awaiting trial, is charged with two counts each of solicitation to commit murder and obstruction of justice.

Giovanni Rivieri "stalked" his ex-girlfriend and her current lover for more than a year before trying to hire a hit man to kill the man and assault the woman, a Harford County prosecutor has said."

The defense attorney for a Baltimore pastor accused of hiring a hit man to kill a blind and mentally disabled man for life insurance money said at least two other disabled people whose policies listed the suspect as a beneficiary had died, though their deaths were the result of natural causes and the policies had been canceled before their deaths. The attorney made his remarks shortly after Kevin Jerome Pushia, 32, was ordered held without bond in a court appearance Tuesday. Pushia, of the 4500 block of Parkside Place, has been charged with nine counts, including first-degree murder, in the death of Lemuel Wallace, who lived in a Pikesville group home affiliated with the Arc of Baltimore.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center issued another warning about the hit man e-mail scheme that first surfaced a couple years ago and, more recently, earlier this year. The center said it continues to receive thousands of reports on the hit man e-mail, but it warns that the content has evolved since late 2006. The two new versions of the scheme started appearing in July. One e-mail instructed recipients to contact a designated telephone number, and the other e-mail claimed the recipient or a "loved one" would be kidnapped unless a ransom was paid.

A federal judge yesterday sentenced Solothal "Itchy Man" Thomas, the West Baltimore hit man who was often accused but rarely convicted in state courts, to life in prison plus 10 years. Judge Catherine C. Blake was legally required to impose the life sentence after Thomas was convicted over the summer after a jury trial. Thomas' co-defendant, 30-year-old Edward Countess, received the same sentence. Thomas, 30, had been charged with killing two people and attempting to kill a dozen more as part of his work as an "enforcer" for a large drug organization.

The chance to see Clark Johnson (a.k.a. Detective Meldrick Lewis of "Homicide") playing the role of a hit man wannabe would be enough to recommend "Deliberate Intent," a made-for-cable movie about a famous Maryland murder case premiering tonight on the FX Channel. But there's more: a strong performance by Academy-Award-winning actor Timothy Hutton in the lead, as well as a screenplay that intelligently illuminates one of the more important recent First Amendment cases. The film, based on a book of the same title by Rod Smolla, follows the story of a former Motown executive, Lawrence Horn (James McDaniel)

Three men have been indicted in an alleged plot to kill a federal judge who was to have presided over their trial on charges of running the Woodland organization, a Northwest Baltimore drug ring linked to two killings. Charged with conspiracy to commit murder were Stover "Big Ox" Stockton, Levi "Vi" Johnson and Antonio Hayes, who federal prosecutors said used coded language in prison to arrange the hiring of a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor handling the case. The indictments were unsealed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, where the men are scheduled to go to trial on murder, racketeering and narcotics charges in January.

Ruthann Aron hopped from pay phone to pay phone during the weekend before her arrest, negotiating a deal with a supposed contract killer. The tapes played at her retrial yesterday also showed she worried that her plan to have her husband and another man killed would be found out.It was 11: 10 a.m. on June 7, 1997, when Aron, a prominent developer, and the "hit man," undercover Detective Terry Ryan, first spoke. She was talking from a coin phone in the entry of a Sears store at White Oak shopping center.

Doctors for the defense and prosecution yesterday gave vastly different, but hardly surprising, views of the mind of Ruthann Aron.A psychiatrist hired by Aron said that taped conversations between his patient and a phony hit man prove she was mentally ill and "out in the ozone" at the time of her arrest last summer.Dr. Michael Spodak became the second medical witness for the defense to testify that Aron, 55, was not criminally responsible when she took out contracts on the lives of her husband and another man.But after the defense rested its case, a state psychologist testified that while Aron suffered from several mental disorders, she was criminally responsible for her actions.

A Columbia man was convicted yesterday of trying to resolve a heated divorce and custody battle by hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill his wife.Mark Cordero, 43, wearing a suit and leg irons in Howard County Circuit Court, admits to the crime, his attorney said, but pleaded not guilty because of technical flaws in the case.Cordero, a former computer engineer for International Business Machines Corp., was found guilty by Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.Prosecutors said Cordero could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced March 31, although state guidelines recommend a sentence of four to nine years for solicitation of murder.

Mark Cordero was convicted yesterday of trying to resolve a heated divorce and custody battle by hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill his wife.The former IBM computer engineer, 43, wearing a suit and leg irons in Howard County Circuit Court, admits to the crime, his attorney said, but pleaded not guilty because of technical flaws in the case.Cordero was found guilty by Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.Prosecutors said Cordero, a Columbia resident, could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced March 31, although state guidelines recommend four to nine years for solicitation of murder.

Ah, that ever nettlesome First Amendment, what with its stipulation that forbids the government from making any law that prohibits free speech. Just what are the limits of free speech, anyway?The debate will rage on virtually forever. Judges can't even agree. A gaggle of idiots in Boulder, Colo., known as Paladin Press published a book called "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors." The book is what it says: a treatise on how to efficiently commit homicide.One Lawrence T. Horn then hired one James E. Perry to murder Horn's ex-wife, his 8-year-old quadriplegic son and the boy's nurse.