A 48-year-old Tallahassee woman, Gretchen Buselli (also known as Gretchen Yarbrough), was handed the maximum sentence by a federal judge in Florida on Monday for her conviction of trying to have her estranged husband killed. U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker sentenced her to 15 years in prison. According to court documents, Buselli had contacted an acquaintance, “CW,” via mail, phone, text message, and an encrypted mobile app in June 2021 about her plan to hire someone to murder her ex-husband, offering to pay $40,000 for the job. She was then connected to an undercover FBI agent who she paid a $5,000 advance to, believing that he was the assassin she hired.
The investigation into Buselli began when she communicated with her acquaintance about her plan to have her husband killed. She confided in CW, who she had known since their teenage years and who had been to prison, believing that the only way to get justice for her daughter was to get rid of her ex-husband. She was said to have become “very excited” when CW proposed dumping her ex’s body in the ocean. She was then surveilled depositing the payment at a public park in September 2021. After being told by the undercover agent that her ex-husband had been killed, she said “thank you.”
Buselli was convicted of using an interstate commerce facility in the commission of murder-for-hire and of lying to the FBI. Her assignment to a federal prison is yet to be determined.