An inmate at the Centre County Correctional Facility was charged on Tuesday with attempting to hire a hitman to kill a police informant in a drug case against him for the second time.
Mark C. Hackett, 64, was charged with solicitation of first degree murder for allegedly offering another man $10,000 to kill the informant with a lethal dose of fentanyl.
Hackett was originally accused in March of soliciting another Centre County jail inmate to kill the informant with a “hotshot” of fentanyl and conspiring with his girlfriend, Amanda L. Zortman, over a period of months to carry out the failed plot.
After her her arrest, Zortman told investigators that Hackett also discussed the plan with another man when they were both inmates in Clearfield County, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by state police at Rockview filed on Tuesday. Similar to the original plan, Zortman was to take the Clearfield inmate after his release to kill the informant, police wrote.
Investigators reviewed a jail call from February and found the Clearfield inmate told Zortman “on my life, on my children’s life when I come home in March it will be done,” according to the affidavit. In another call, the Clearfield inmate said the Centre County inmate solicited by Hackett had been released and was “too scared” to do what Hackett asked, police wrote.
In an interview with investigators, the Clearfield inmate said Hackett offered him $10,000 in February, while both were lodged in the same jail, to kill a confidential informant who needed to “go away,” according to the affidavit. The plan, he allegedly told police, was for Zortman to connect him with the informant, whom he would befriend then give the lethal dose of fentanyl.
Hackett was arraigned on Tuesday afternoon by District Judge Kelley Gillette-Walker and remains jailed without bail. A preliminary hearing on the new charge is scheduled for Oct. 22.
Zortman, who has not been charged in the second hitman case, also remains jailed on a non-bailable offense.
