A Texas man who tried to hire a former U.S. Marine to kill his ex-girlfriend because she was dating a black man was caught on hidden cameras arranging the would-be hit.
Keith Cote, 62, was arrested in October last year after the hitman he hired to murder his ex-girlfriend, SanDee Jones, alerted authorities and worked with them to expose his plans.
Joey Sees told police that he was with his wife at Cote’s house in Austin last year when the murder-for-hire plan was first mentioned.
Cote, who was in a wheelchair after being left paralyzed in 2013, told Sees he needed a ‘dirty deed, done dirt cheap’, KXAN reports.
He asked him if he could get a silencer and a 9mm handgun before offering him $10,000 cash to kill Jones and an additional $15,000 to ‘watch him put a bullet in her head’.
Sees said Cote had initially told him that he would be perfect for the job because he knew he had killed before given his career as a Marine.
‘When we’re in a warzone, we’re just trying to get home and we’re just protecting each other. I guess he thought every Marine is a hitman,’ Sees said.
‘We’re not killers. We just do our job, but our job isn’t to come home and murder someone because she’s dating a black guy.’
The ex-Marine agreed to help Cote because Sees feared he would just hire someone else to carry out the hit.
