Charges dropped for 75-year-old woman accused of hiring hit man
Nov 29, 2022, 8:33 PM
Charges against Linda Tracy Gillman were dismissed after the state was not ready to move forward with a jury trial. Gillman is already convicted and in prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill her ex-husband and was scheduled to be on trial for attempting to hire yet another hit man. (Spenser Heaps/Deseret News)
(Spenser Heaps/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Charges against a Herriman woman accused of hiring a hit man were dismissed on Nov. 10 after the state’s attorneys were not ready to move forward with a jury trial.
Linda Tracy Gillman, 75, had been charged with two counts of criminal solicitation, a first-degree felony; obstructing justice, a second-degree felony; and criminal solicitation, a third-degree felony.
Charging documents from March 2018 claim while Gillman was incarcerated she tried to hire a hit man to take out someone who would be a witness in her case — a case in which she is now convicted of hiring a hit man to kill her ex-husband.
Court records show that on the first scheduled day of the jury trial, the state asked to reschedule for a later date and the woman’s attorney objected.
Judge Paul B. Parker granted a request from Kathryn Nester, Gillman’s attorney, to dismiss the case without prejudice, which means it could be filed again if the state decides it is ready to move forward.
Gillman, who has been in the custody of the Department of Corrections at the Utah State Prison, was ordered to not be held in custody any longer for this case.
The 75-year-old woman was found guilty of criminal solicitation by a jury, a first-degree felony, in the earlier case and was sentenced by Parker to spend at least three years and up to life in the Utah State Prison in October 2018.
In that case, she was convicted of offering money to one of her employees and asking him to arrange to have her ex-husband killed. That employee went to police to report Gillman’s actions.
The charges dismissed this November were filed on the day this jury trial began and claim she was trying to have a key witness in the original case and an attorney murdered.
Charges said Gillman asked an attorney to bring her a check, and jail officers intercepted an envelope with a check for $155,000 which was supposed to be delivered to another inmate. The court documents say she had offered to pay bail for another inmate in exchange for tampering with evidence and take a witness out if he did not sign a confession letter she had authored.
Gillman was also charged with attempted obstruction of justice, a third-degree felony, for asking another inmate to take care of the man who went to the police. That charge was dismissed based on problems with a witness.
