The price of murder can vary.
In the case of an upstate New York man charged this week with hiring a convicted killer to dispense with a rival, it was a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, $250 to rent a van from a nun, $200 for gas and $1,000 to feed the victim’s body to the hogs on a Pennsylvania farm.
Those were the bizarre details of the murder plot that the man, Jeal Sutherland, of Colonie, N.Y., is charged with hatching with a hired killer, who turned out to be an F.B.I. informer, an agent wrote in an affidavit filed in federal court in Albany on Monday.
The planned murder, of a man who shares a child with Mr. Sutherland’s romantic partner, did not happen, according to the federal authorities. But Mr. Sutherland and the informer discussed the plot in several recorded conversations, the affidavit says.
Mr. Sutherland, 57, was in the Albany County Jail Tuesday night after pleading not guilty to a federal murder-for-hire charge before Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart. He ordered that Mr. Sutherland be held until a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
A lawyer representing him, Andrew Safranko, did not respond to a call seeking comment. He told The Times Union, “I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
Mr. Sutherland, The Times Union reported, works in solar-panel sales and “is well-known in the Colonie area for his years of involvement in several youth baseball programs.”
The inquiry that led to the charge against him began in November, after the F.B.I. learned that state law enforcement authorities were investigating the informer for having set a car on fire, according to the agent’s affidavit, which describes the following series of events.
The informer, whose criminal record includes a murder conviction, worked as an “enforcer” for Mr. Sutherland, receiving employment and loans in exchange for intimidating people who owed Mr. Sutherland money.
The informer told the federal authorities that the car he had set on fire belonged to the mother of the man Mr. Sutherland wanted killed, and that Mr. Sutherland wanted it burned to prevent the woman from testifying at a child custody hearing.
In the same interview, the informer told investigators that Mr. Sutherland had asked him to kill the woman’s son, who at that point was incarcerated in a New York prison.
Several recorded meetings between the informer and Mr. Sutherland followed.
In one conversation, on Dec. 28, the informer sketched out the plot’s details.
“So I have a van that I can rent for, like, $250 from a nun,” he said. “We take him to a farm and let the hogs eat him. Now you can go with me if you want.”
Mr. Sutherland declined, saying he would probably be in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Later in the conversation, Mr. Sutherland appeared to hesitate.
“I just changed my mind,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t want him dead now?” the informer asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t want him … I don’t want to know anything about it.”
“Oh, OK. Well, you want to see, you want to see the proof that he’s dead?”
“Of course.”
In a conversation on Jan. 3, the informer told Mr. Sutherland that the plans were proceeding.
“It’s already set in motion,” he said.
“Good,” Mr. Sutherland responded.
The informer repeated that he needed $200 for the van and $1,000 for the hog farmer. He also said he would need an E-ZPass transponder and described how he planned to abduct the victim, who was to be released from prison this month, from a parole office and to shoot him in the head in the van. If necessary, he added, he would set the van on fire.
And if the nun inquired about it?
“What happened?” the informer asked rhetorically. “I don’t know what happened, Sister. You know. You got insurance, don’t you?”
The two men met on Friday at a credit union in Colonie, where they discussed Mr. Sutherland’s forgiveness of several thousands of dollars in debt that the informer owed him. They also called the “hog farmer,” who was actually an undercover F.B.I. agent.
The agent said during the conversation that he would “need something up front” for the use of his farm: a “good bottle of bourbon.”
On Sunday, Mr. Sutherland and the informer drove to an address in Schenectady, where Mr. Sutherland handed over an E-ZPass transponder, $1,450 in cash and a bottle of Wild Turkey for the “farmer.”
