Inmate Hires Hit Man To Kill Undercover Trooper That Posed As Hit Man
From the archive: published Mar 5, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Andrew Gordon does not have much luck when it comes to crime. He is currently an inmate at the Middlesex County House of Correction in Billerica, Maine. Gordon was convicted today of trying to hire a hit man to kill the undercover State Police trooper who posed as a hit man in his pending state case. He also wanted a second witness killed. Gordon, 53, of Chelmsford, thought he had hired a gang member through a fellow inmate to carry out the deed. Gordon had approached the inmate with his plot and the inmate told him his cousin could help out, according to the Boston Globe. The inmate then talked to his own defense lawyer and worked with authorities to set up Gordon.
In the summer of 2014, Andrew Gordon had vandalized his wife’s car as well as his neighbors’ by deflating their tires when he learned she wanted a divorce. He is alleged to have stalked his estranged wife and watched her at her home from a nearby woods using binoculars and wearing a ski mask, according to the Patch. Gordon had attempted to hire a hit man for $20,000 to kill his wife, but then later changed it to having her beaten so bad she could not appear at a court hearing. Allegedly, he wanted to save money over the divorce. In September 2014, Andrew Gordon, a financial planner, was arrested and charged with soliciting a felony, attempted assault and battery, intimidation of a witness, and violating a restraining order. That trial is still pending.
In a statement about the first case, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said, “This defendant’s alleged actions escalated quickly from property damage to potentially severe violence. These allegations affected the safety and property of several people, including total strangers.”
Eventually, they provided him with a telephone number to reach Silva, but Gordon was reluctant to communicate over the telephone, so he had the other inmate call and Gordon would instruct him what to say. Gordon told Silva to make the deaths look like accidents, adding that he didn’t want the cop’s body to be found. He suggested that Silva follow the state trooper home. He also suggested a house fire. Gordon felt that if the two witnesses were not able to testify, it would weaken the first case against him. In written communication, Gordon would wear gloves to handle the correspondence and talked in code about “snow removal.”
In one of the letters he sent to Silva, Gordon wrote in block letters, “TAKE CARE OF BOTH SNOW JOBS SOON. NO TIME TO LOSE… PAY AFTER COMPLETION OF AT LEAST ONE. SEND PROOF.”
Today, a federal jury in Boston convicted Andrew S. Gordon of five counts of using the mail or telephone with the intent to hire the murder of the undercover Massachusetts State Police trooper and another man. The names of the intended victims were withheld to protect their identity. Andrew Gordon will face sentencing on May 20, according to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz. Gordon could be facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
