Sports Direct worker who tried to hire hitman to kill love rival after both had affair with boss has sentence HALVED
A JEALOUS Sports Direct worker who tried to pay a contract killer to murder her love rival had her 12-year jail stretch halved in London’s Appeal Court.
Whitney Franks, 27, went on the dark web to seek out an assassin to kill work colleague Ruut Ruutna after they became involved in a love triangle, offering £1,000 in BitCoin.
And she thought she had got lucky when she stumbled on a web page supposedly linked to the infamous Mexican Sinaloa drugs cartel, which claimed to sell “murder, drugs and guns”.
She offered £1,000 for a gunman to travel to Milton Keynes and take out Ms Ruutna, the Appeal Court heard, providing her intended victim’s home and contact details, and said she could pay more if necessary.
But the cartel website turned out to be a scam and Franks ended up vainly scrabbling to get her money back, before police were tipped off about her aborted hunt for a killer.
She was jailed for 12 years at Reading Crown Court last September after jurors convicted her of soliciting to murder, but has now had that slashed to six years by appeal judges.
Mr Justice Hilliard said “naive and immature” Franks hatched her plot after getting snarled up in a tortured love triangle involving her manager, James Prest, and their mutual colleague, Miss Ruutna.
She was torn by anguish after learning he had been seeing both of them, the Appeal Court heard, and accused him of “sneaking out” to Miss Ruutna’s house at night.
The message she posted to recruit a killer in August 2020 read: “I’m looking to hire for the murder of a woman”.
She was exposed by an investigative journalist who accidentally discovered her post while probing the world of Mexican gangsters on the dark web.
At her trial, she claimed she never intended for the kill to be carried out, but the jury rejected her defence and she was convicted.
The judge who sentenced her said Franks’ crime was committed against the backdrop of Covid and protracted isolation when she was “sitting at home in lockdown accessing the dark web”, and may not have thought through what she was doing.
But this week, Franks successfully challenged her 12-year jail stretch in the Appeal Court with claims that it was out of proportion and excessive.
Her barrister, James McCrindell, pointed out that Franks had changed her mind about the kill and only toyed with her murderous web plan for two or three days.
She was of previous “outstanding character”, he told the court, has been a model inmate behind bars and is currently doing a course in cat studies.
“She would like a career helping animals in the fullness of time,” he added.
After an hour-long hearing, Mr Justice Hilliard, who was sitting with two other judges, allowed her appeal, cutting Franks’ sentence from 12 to six years.
He noted the devastating impact of her crime on her victim, who was terrified, suffered panic attacks and even fled Milton Keynes for a time to get over her ordeal.
“There’s no saying what might have happened if someone in a position to commit murder had contacted Franks,” said the judge.
“In the end, they did not and she desisted, but her use of the dark web was a serious aggravating feature of the case, as was her willingness to use a payment device which would have been hard to trace.”
But he noted that there were no clear sentencing guidelines for this novel type of crime, adding: “no murder attempt of any sort was ever made or was even feasible.
“The contact here was merely preparatory and no price had been agreed, although Franks didn’t know that those with whom she was in contact were never going to carry out her wishes.”
He ruled her 12-year jail term excessive and cut it to six years.