A Kentucky doctor who tried to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband during a custody battle over their children has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
A judge also ordered Stephanie Russell pay a $10,000 fineaccording to the US Department of Justice.
Russell, 53, is a pediatrician from Louisville. His clinic was called KidzLife Pediatrics.
According to court records, Russell and her ex-husband were fighting in court over custody of their two young children when she began asking employees at her office in 2021 if they knew anyone she could get to kill him.
She allegedly told one of her employees that she wanted her ex-husband dead so she could get sole custody, according to an affidavit from FBI special agent Mariola Hernandez.
One of the employees Russell approached told a private investigator about the request, and the investigator advised the employee to contact the FBI, according to the affidavit.
Conversations with an undercover FBI agent
The FBI eventually had one of the people Russell approached give him the phone number of a suspected Chicago-area killer, who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
In recorded calls, Russell said she wanted her ex-husband to “completely disappear from my life” and wanted the death to look like a suicide to divert attention from herself because she had been a victim of suicide. sincere about hating himaccording to court records.
The court record contains the following transcript of a conversation:
Russell: “I mean, do you like, they disappear? Do you like shooting them on the road? Like, what happens? Or am I just not supposed to know?
Hit man: “It really depends, I mean, on the dictates of price. That’s how it happens. The more work I have to do, the more it will cost you, but maybe, do you want it to look like suicide? You want this to happen. . .”
Russell: “Yes, that would be amazing.”
Russell agreed to pay the killer $7,000 and said she could receive $10,000 from her ex-husband’s house.
Russell placed the first payment of $3,500 in a sample collection box outside his office on May 18, 2022, for the undercover agent to collect.
The FBI arrested her the next day.
The doctor’s mental health and the sentence
Russell finally pleaded guilty to one count of causing a person to travel across state lines in murder-for-hire conspiracy, and one count of aiding and abetting interstate stalking.
Russell’s defense attorneys said supporters described her as an empathetic person and a skilled doctor who demonstrated “boundless commitment to patients,” providing money for a patient’s father to buy Christmas gifts after losing his job.
However, Russell was mentally ill — troubled by the stress of the custody battle — when she tried to hire a hitman, her lawyers said in a sentencing memorandum.
In the opinion of one doctor who evaluated her, when Russell came “under increasing intensity of stress and distress related to a very contentious custody battle,” she became “profoundly delusional and obsessively fixated,” with her thoughts and behavior becoming “Angry, reality-distorted, delusional and psychotic,” the memo said.
The 12-year sentence was the maximum negotiated as part of Russell’s guilty plea.
U.S. District Judge David J. Hale sentenced Russell on Wednesday.
