Washington, D.C. – A 45-year-old Silver Spring man, Erik Collins, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for soliciting the murder of his former boyfriend after having taken out five accidental death and life insurance policies totaling $500,000, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor announced today.

Collins, formerly of the 800 block of Thayer Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland, was sentenced earlier today in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by the Honorable John M. Mott. In June 2008, Collins was found guilty by a jury of one count of Solicitation of Murder. Collins also faces an additional period of incarceration relating to a conviction for manslaughter in 1999, in which the defendant brutally killed another former lover.

The evidence at trial established that, in September 2007, the defendant solicited two men to murder his 22-year-old boyfriend with whom the defendant had been engaged in an on-and-off relationship since October 2005. The first witness agreed to commit the murder for Collins in exchange for less than $1,000, but instead went to the police to report the crime, and later assisted members of the Metropolitan Police Department with their investigation of the defendant. The witness recorded numerous telephone conversations with the defendant and participated in two covert surveillance operations relating to the defendant’s attempts to purchase a gun from an undercover officer. The witness described the plan that the defendant had laid out for the murder, in which the defendant would have the witness waiting in his garage with a gun, the defendant would send the intended target out to the garage and the witness was “to blow his head off.” The defendant can be heard on a subsequent recorded call suggesting an alternative method for the killing, stating to the witness, “Maybe I should just strangle this dude out. How is it to strangle someone? . . . What about strangling, could we do that?”

After the defendant’s arrest, a second witness came forward and reported that the defendant had hired him to kill someone as well. According to the second witness, the defendant offered him $5,000 to kill this person and displayed an insurance policy as proof of his ability to make the payment. The defendant provided the second witness with $300 with which to purchase a gun to commit the murder, but that witness took the defendant’s money and never returned. The witness described the defendant’s plan as entailing a midnight trip to North Carolina, where the intended target lived at the time, and during which the defendant would bring the witness to the victim so that the witness could shoot and kill him.

Although the name of the intended target had not been provided, both witnesses testified at trial as to virtually mirroring details about the defendant’s intended target of the murder, as well as the method and means of the killing. Various additional pieces of evidence corroborated the testimony of the two witnesses at trial, and identified the defendant’s former boyfriend as the intended target of the murder.

The defendant’s motive for the murder appears to have been money, specifically relating to five separate $100,000 insurance policies that the defendant had taken out on the victim – $400,000 in accidental death insurance and $100,000 in regular life insurance. A critical piece of evidence in the case was several audio recordings of phone calls placed by the defendant to insurance companies, pretending to be his former boyfriend, applying for insurance policies in the former boyfriend’s name and naming himself, the defendant, as the beneficiary on those policies. The former boyfriend also testified at the trial as having had no knowledge about the defendant’s calls to the insurance companies and no knowledge about accidental death insurance – noting simply that he and the defendant had discussed “regular life insurance – not accidental death.” The former boyfriend also described in detail the defendant’s pattern of control and manipulation throughout the course of their rocky relationship, which ended with the defendant’s attempt to exert the ultimate form of control – taking the former boyfriend’s life. Documentary evidence obtained and presented during the trial revealed that the defendant had amassed in excess of $55,000 in debt at the time that he solicited the witnesses to murder his former boyfriend.

In announcing today’s sentence, U.S. Attorney Taylor commended lead Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Detective Mary Bonaccorsy, who did an exceptional job investigating the case and working with the victim and other witnesses. He also praised the outstanding assistance of MPD Detectives Matthew Shinton, Jonathan Lewis, Gregory Bush, Dewey Watkins, Drew Smith, Clyde Hilliard, Sergeant Jeffrey Madison, Officer Anthony Faverio, as well as Montgomery County Department of Police Detectives Roger St. Louis and Dimitry Ruvin and U.S. Deputy Marshal Rich Kelly. In addition, the U.S. Attorney praised Victim/Witness Advocate Michael Hailey, who provided invaluable assistance to the victim and other witnesses in this case; Larry Grasso, Bill Hamann and Sharon Johnson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Intelligence Unit; members of the Litigation Support Unit who assisted with the electronic presentation of evidence, including Tyrone Bowie, Errol Spears, Tim Linder, Ron Royal, Joseph Calvarese and Janay Jones; Paralegal Specialists Joyce Arthur and Jason Manuel; Legal Assistants Tiffany Jones and Donice Adams; members of the Victim Witness Assistance Unit, including David Foster, Katina Adams and La June Thames; and the assistance of USAO Investigator John Marsh and Special Agent Kyo Dolan of the U.S. Secret Service for their assistance with the forensic analysis. Finally, he commended Assistant U.S. Attorney David Last and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Peterson for their work in investigating and prosecuting the case.