By Samaia Hernandez, The Hartford Courant –
SIMSBURY, Conn. — A 36-year-old Connecticut woman involved in a three-year custody battle over her 7-year-old daughter and a $50 million fund has been arrested a charge that she paid a man $5,000 to kill her estranged husband.
A warrant for the arrest of Tiffany Khalily Stevens says that police have a recording in which she asks a man when he will “take him out,” says that she has paid the man $5,000 and expresses concern about losing custody of her daughter.
Stevens was arrested July 13 and charged with inciting injury to persons or property, and is free after posting $1 million bail. She is scheduled to appear July 31 at Superior Court in Enfield.
Stevens, of Bloomfield, currently has custody of her daughter amid a drawn-out and contentious proceeding with her husband, Eric Stevens of Simsbury, according to the warrant for her arrest.
She also has control of the $50 million fund, set aside for the parent who obtained custody of the child.
Eric Stevens has been trying to prove that his estranged wife is an unfit mother, the warrant says. It adds that he told police that he has not seen his daughter in four years.
The Stevenses had “numerous police contacts since 2009 during the end of their marital relationship,” a police officer wrote in the warrant. Eric Stevens was incarcerated as a result of one of those incidents in 2009, which, along with financial complications, prompted the creation of the $50 million fund, the officer wrote.
In June of this year, Eric Stevens met a maintenance worker at a Pinnacle Mountain estate where the Stevenses share a storage space, according to the warrant. The worker, identified as John McDaid, told Eric Stevens that in numerous conversations over a year, Tiffany Stevens asked if he could help her buy prescription drugs and expressed hatred for her husband, whom she said abused her and assaulted their daughter, the warrant says.
Eventually, she started asking if McDaid knew anyone who would kill her husband, and toward the end of April, she gave McDaid money, saying, “Can you just do it?” the warrant says.
McDaid said he accepted $5,000 from Tiffany Stevens in April and spent it on personal items, and never intended to harm Eric Stevens, according to the warrant.
McDaid told Eric Stevens about the conversations, and Stevens asked McDaid to sell drugs to Tiffany Stevens and record the transaction, the warrant says.
In a 22-minute conversation recorded on a laptop computer, which McDaid provided to the Simsbury Police Department, a woman identified by Eric Stevens as his estranged wife asks when McDaid will “take him out” and says, “I’ve already paid you $5,000.” She continually asks “when?” to which the man replies, “soon,” the warrant says.
Eric Stevens and McDaid met with police on July 6, and Stevens told an officer he had been targeted in a murder-for-hire plot.
