A mother hired a hitman to kill her estranged ex-partner for $30,000 after a lengthy custody battle over their young daughter, prosecutors have alleged. Jaclyn Skuce, 43, is accused of sleeping with the killer to gun down Anthony Sheppard inside his home in Hartselle, Alabama, about 70 miles north of Birmingham.
The court heard that Sheppard had failed to appear for a hearing in their long-running custody dispute at Limestone County District Court on the morning of July 24, 2020. After his attorney urged police to respond to the address, officers arrived at his home to find him dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
Nearly six years on from the murder, for which gunman Logan Delp has already been convicted and imprisoned, Skuce faces three capital murder charges for allegedly arranging the hit job. Prosecutors allege that Skuce admitted to hiring Delp via Facebook to 'take out' her former partner for $30,000.
According to WAFF, an interview was played in court in which she also told investigators that she had sex with Delp so he would carry out the killing. In that same interview, she claimed that she was scared for her and her daughter's lives, and that Sheppard had threatened her and sexually abused their daughter.
Inside court this week, prosecutors called on Sheppard's attorney Billy Burney who testified that he spoke with his client the night before the hearing and described him as being in good spirits, the Decatur Daily reported. According to Burney, Sheppard was having supervised 2-hour visits with his daughter twice a month, but was moving towards unsupervised visits.
Under cross-examination, Burney said that Sheppard's visits with his daughter were supervised, which he claimed was to protect Sheppard. It was then alleged that Sheppard had been indicted for sexual abuse by Skuce's lawyers, who claimed that she needed to protect her daughter because of it. According to the outlet, Burney said: 'That's the first I heard of it', when speaking of the indictment held against his client.
Describing the morning he was found dead, Burney said: 'I tried calling him and I couldn't get him to answer the phone, and he was nowhere to be found on the day of the hearing. I was shocked and dismayed.' After he saw Skuce in the hallways of the courthouse with her face down, he asked the local police department to respond to Sheppard's home for a welfare check.
Prosecutors said that Delp arrived at Sheppard's home and shot him a number of times through a screen door with a 9mm handgun. Video footage of the brazen murder was shown at court, showing a figure dressed in grey and blue opening fire on Sheppard. The footage, reported by the Hartselle Inquirer, also showed Sheppard being shot in the back as he crawled away from Delp.
After the killing, Delp was sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole. At trial last year, it was determined that he was hired to murder Sheppard to prevent him from regaining custody of his daughter.
