State police at Rockview on Wednesday filed charges against the Centre County Correctional Facility inmate accused of devising a failed plot to murder a confidential police informant in a drug case against him.
Mark C. Hackett, 63, allegedly conspired with his girlfriend, Amanda L. Zortman, in an attempt to hire a hitman to deliver a lethal dose of fentanyl to an informant who purchased drugs from Hackett on behalf of law enforcement during an investigation last year.
Hackett is charged with solicitation of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and criminal use of a communication facility.
Zortman, 46, of Clearfield County, was charged with the same crimes on Monday.
Another Centre County jail inmate told state police in October that Hackett was attempting to hire a hitman and had offered him up to $10,000 to kill the informant, according to an affidavit of probable cause. Hackett also allegedly offered to provide payment in one pound of methamphetamine and pay his bail. The plan, police wrote, was for Zortman to pick up the man when he was released from rehab and drive him to Huntingdon, where he would provide or directly inject the informant with a “hotshot” of fentanyl.
Between October and February, investigators reviewed recorded calls and messages in which Hackett used veiled language to discuss the plot with Zortman, initially telling her that he had “a solution to our problem,” that involved calling another person for “a couple pounds of the special good meat,” according to the affidavit. When the other inmate was placed in restrictive housing in November, Hackett allegedly told Zortman that she needed to get someone to “go see that guy in Huntingdon… to take care of that” because he “had a guy here but he got jammed up.”
In January, Hackett “repeatedly brought up the plan” to kill the informant with the other inmate, who Hackett said was his “only option to have this done,” police wrote.
Police also spoke to the informant, who said Hackett was trying to have him killed and that his former residence was broken into, a day after Hackett allegedly told Zortman he needed someone to go to Huntingdon.
After being taken into custody on Monday, Zortman said she did not know the name of the confidential informant and that while she did travel with Hackett to deliver drugs, they had never done so in Huntingdon, according to the complaint.
She also told police that she agreed to pick up the other inmate, set him up in a camper on her property and drive him to Huntingdon when he was ready, according to the complaint. But she said she did not know what he was going to do there and didn’t know “anything about killing anybody in Huntingdon.”
Hackett’s preliminary arraignment is scheduled for Thursday afternoon before District Judge Kelley Gillette-Walker, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 12.
Zortman was arraigned Monday night and jailed on non-bailable offenses. Her preliminary hearing is also scheduled for March 12.
