LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky doctor charged with hiring a hitman to kill her ex-husband pleaded guilty Monday in federal court.
David Mour, attorney for Dr. Stephanie Russell, confirmed to WHAS11 his client pleaded guilty to one count of murder for hire and one count of stalking. She will be sentenced this summer.
Russell was arrested in May 2022. According to court records, Stephanie Russell believed she hired someone to kill her ex-husband Rick Crabtree.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Russell went through a divorce in which part of the settlement gave Crabtree custody of the children.
According to a news release issued Monday, Russell began soliciting her employees at Kidzlife Pediatrics in Norton Commons in July 2021 asking them if they knew anyone who would kill Crabtree.
One of the employees approached the FBI in spring 2022 with information about what Russell called "Christmas Flowers". A code she used when referencing the attempted murder plot.
The person Russell ended up getting in contact with and hired was actually an undercover FBI agent. She agreed to pay the agent $7,000 in total for the deed.
In May 2022, Russell started having phone conversations with the agent she thought was a hitman. One of those conversations was spelled out in the release:
Hitman: Obviously you want [R.C.] killed, right, . . . ?
Russell: I want him to be completely gone from my life, yes . . . .
Hitman: Well I mean that can be in the Bahamas, but I don’t think we’re talking a vacation away. I think we’re talking in the ground.
Russell: I mean, do you like, do they disappear? Do you like shoot them on the road? Like what happens? Or should I just not know?
Hitman: It really depends on, I mean, price dictates. That’s just how that goes. The more work I got to do, the more it’s going to cost you, but it could be, do you want it to look like a suicide? Do you want it to . . .
Russell: Yes, that would be amazing.
Prosecutors said Russell was seen on surveillance video placing $3,500 in a specimen box outside of her medical office for the hitman to retrieve. Court filings indicated Russell agreed to pay the other half once the job was done.
New documents released last month showed Russell wanted to put a death spell on Crabtree after he was awarded full custody of their two children. She was granted supervised visitation a couple days a week.
She claimed he was "abusing her children" in 2019. In an affidavit released in 2022, the detective assigned to the case did not find any evidence of child abuse according to the documents.
Russell had messaged a woman who had described herself as a spiritual healer on Whatsapp, asking for help to kill the man using supernatural means, according to documents.
The healer said her spells have an 85% death rate, and it could work within five hours documents show.
The U.S. Attorney's Office also referenced how Russell consistently harassed and stalked Crabtree.
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