Murder By Cat: Suspect Plotted To Pin Homicide On Kitty

St. Louis, MO – A FBI suspect allegedly plotted to pin a murder on the victim’s cat. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Brett L. Nash was trying to avoid foreclosure on his home. Nash hatched a plot to abduct and hold a supposedly rich lawyer for a $30,000 or more ransom. The intended victim had a romantic interest in Nash’s wife, a former dancer the lawyer had known for several years and who had a key to his house.

Prosecutors claim Nash had considered various murder plots, including a hot-tub electrocution by a knocked over radio that he would blame on the victim’s cat. But death by kitty was not Nash’s main focus. The FBI charged that Nash’s primary plot was to hold the unnamed lawyer at home for weeks, forcing him to write checks and hand over cash.

One plan involved fooling the victim into thinking he was wired with explosives, an idea that reportedly came from a TV show plot. Another blackmail plot involved smearing the victim’s fingerprints on a knife and threatening to kill the lawyer’s female friend with it unless he cooperated.

The cat murderer tried to solicit the help of his wife, but she refused. The arguments and ensuing physical violence led to Nash pulling out some of his wife’s hair, which he threatened to leave at the potential crime scene.

For help, Nash turned to a coworker on a barge who had a criminal record. This fellow union member turned Nash into the police after recording conversations with the cat murderer.

When the FBI arrested the cat murderer, they found a pellet gun, ski mask, handcuffs, and diagram of the lawyer’s house. Nash faces 20 years in prison when he is sentenced March 13.

Nash is now denying he ever plotted to pin murder on a cat. As part of Nash’s guilty plea to a charge of solicitation of a crime of violence, prosecutors agreed to drop other charges, which included murder-for-hire. But kitty cat death plots will probably haunt Nash when he’s in prison.