Austin Woman Arrested for Plotting Husband's Murder
- By Lisa Tsering, Staff Reporter
- Sep 10, 2013
Reena Patel, 34, of Austin, Texas, has been charged with criminal solicitation of capital murder after she allegedly hired teenagers $4,000 to kill her husband. (Austin Police Department photo)
- United States
An Indian American mother of two from a well-to-do West Austin neighborhood was charged Sept. 9 with plotting the death of her husband.
According to KEYE TV, Reena Ratilal Patel got into her white Toyota Highlander and drove from her home on Hawks Canyon Circle in a gated community in Steiner Ranch to an apartment building on Rutland Drive in North Austin at around 2 p.m., and attempted to entice some young people there to commit murder.
"I thought it was crazy. It kind of tripped me out," resident Ebony Pettiford told KEYE. Pettiford, 20, said that on Sept. 4, she spotted Patel walking around her neighborhood and noticed that she looked out of place there.
"She was like, 'Do you know anybody who can kill my husband?' And I was like, 'Kill your husband?' She was like, 'Yeah,'" said Pettiford. "She wanted him shot, just point blank." According to an affidavit filed Sept. 9 in a county court in Austin, the 34-year-old Patel offered $4,000 in cash to anyone who would kill her husband, Brij Patel.
When Patel didn't get a satisfactory response from Pettiford, she then approached a group of nearby teens, saying that her husband had beaten her and asking them to kill him. She offered $750 on the spot and the remainder when the killer reached her home. After witnesses phoned the police, they arrived and questioned Reena Patel, who responded that she had gotten lost on her way to a friend's house and had stopped to ask for directions. Officers searched Patel's vehicle, finding $750 hidden in a bag of candy. Police then went to Patel's home to talk to her husband, and Brij Patel told them that his wife had sent him a text saying she had "two more patients to see at work," and that he would have to pick up their kids from school. Searching their home, police found more cash, $3,450 in an envelope in a drawer next to her sink.
Patel claimed to be a dentist, but she never brought home a paycheck, Brij Patel told police. The Texas Board of Dental Examiners also told police that Patel had never applied for, nor been granted, a license to practice dentistry in Texas. Her LinkedIn profile states that she graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 2008.
While soliciting a hired killer in the apartment complex on Rutland Drive, Patel said the killer should make the crime look like a home invasion gone wrong.
Witness Cynthia Castillo told KEYE, "She was very adamant and she was here for about two hours trying to find someone in this area to do what she wanted them to do.
"She was like, 'It has to look like a robbery.' We said, 'A robbery?' Patel told her the killers could take anything they found, including plasma TVs and computers, and offered details about how her house was laid out and how to find it, said Castillo. Patel is being held on a $1 million bond, and a protective order has been placed on her husband and children. If convicted she faces five to 99 years in prison.
An Austin Police Department spokesperson did not respond to India West's phone call by press time.
http://www.indiawest.com/news/13469-austin-woman-arrested-for-plotting-husband-s-murder.html
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