UK News 24-09-2002 "I hate him. I want him gone forever" who: Millionaire`s wife Shelley Molyneux what: Admits trying to hire hitman to kill hated husband where: The Old Bailey, LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "The wife of a dotcom millionaire was facing the likelihood of a lengthy prison sentence last night," reports Dan McDougall in The Scotsman, "after she admitted attempting to recruit a hitman to have her husband murdered." "Shelley Molyneux put a £20,000 contract on the head of hubby Jon — ex-boss of online business directory Scoot — after their 21-year marriage collapsed," says The Sun`s Ian Hepburn. The 43-year-old told a private investigator that she wanted her husband killed after he ran off with a younger woman. He offered to hook her up with a hitman, but instead phoned The Sunday People, who sent reporter Roger Insall to meet her, armed only with a hidden camera. Yesterday she pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to soliciting her husband`s murder and was remanded in custody until next month. She told Mr Insall her husband had been making her life hell for 20 years. "He wants to destroy me but I will not let him keep doing this to me," she said. "I hate him. I want him gone forever." "Mr Molyneux, a former managing director of Apple Computers UK, earned £175,000-a-year as the chief operating officer of Scoot.com, one of the great successes of the internet boom whose shares have since plummeted," says Terri Judd in The Independent. "His estranged wife stood to gain £600,000 in insurance payouts, their £500,000 house and a further payout of £230,000 from his death." "He is an easy target I would think," Mrs Molyneux told the man she believed to be an assassin, "being 5ft 3in and he is flash. He wears Armani suits and he drives an Audi." [... more]

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