Main image: Stephanie Russell (Oldham County Detention Center); inset left and right: two text messages about obtaining a death spell for her ex-husband (Defense filing).
A Kentucky pediatrician known for having a “Disney theme throughout” her KidzLife Pediatrics office admitted on the morning of her trial that she tried to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband, whom prosecutors said the defendant falsely accused of abusing her and their children.
Stephanie Russell, 53, isn’t the first and, if history is any guide, won’t be the last person to get caught soliciting undercover law enforcement to kill an ex, but Russell’s fall after losing custody of her two children was steep.
Her own defense in February filed WhatsApp messages showing Russell wanted her ex R.C. hexed by “a death spell” in the months before her May 2022 arrest for trying to pay $7,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill the victim.
“What is your success rate? Your price? Your guarantee?” Russell asked, before a woman identified as “mama” answered: “death success rates are 85%.”
The texts showed Russell continued seeking out “a death spell” from a “Spiritual Healer” with a different phone number than the first, before turning to a third contact identified as “Sk.”
“The only way we will have peace is if he dies,” Russell insisted to “Sk,” who answered: “killing him etc is going to harm you and family as he has some type of protection on him.”
What Russell’s attorneys aimed to show through the texts was that their client’s “mental health was severely disturbed” and that she was not legally sane at the time she turned to the occult.
While it was not a surprise that Russell appeared in court on Monday, as that is the day U.S. District Judge David J. Hale set for her trial to begin, the court docket reviewed by Law&Crime showed a flurry of filings in the last week, whether for motions in limine, juror questionnaires, or prosecutors’ exhibit list. In other words, all indications were that the case would go to trial.
But as recently as April 17, last Wednesday, Hale refused to allow Russell to “admit mental-health testimony and records from the family-court litigation” between her and her ex-husband. Then, on April 19, prosecutors remarked on the judge’s order and redoubled their efforts to ensure that Russell would not be able to float false claims that the victim abused her and their children.
“Russell’s allegations of physical and sexual abuse were squarely rejected by the Family Court, which found that the children’s father, R.C., ‘has not committed any acts of domestic violence or abuse against [Russell] or the children as determined by medical providers and the custody evaluator and supported by the evidence presented in this action,”” a footnote explained. “The court further found that ‘[Russell] has fabricated these allegations and then used the children and misinformation in order to build a false narrative that [R.C.] is abusive ….’”
Prosecutors warned that allowing those falsehoods into evidence would have created a “‘trial within a trial’ to thoroughly disprove and discredit those allegations.”
In the end, Russell pleaded guilty to a count each for attempted murder-for-hire and aiding and abetting interstate stalking on the morning of her trial, rendering the foregoing moot.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky emphasized that Russell was caught in no small part because, in July 2021, she “began soliciting multiple KidzLife employees, asking if they knew someone who would be willing to kill R.C.” Russell, the owner and operator of the Louisville-area pediatric practice, was stopped in May 2022 once an undercover fed posing as a hitman recorded conversations he had with her.
“I want him to be completely gone from my life, yes,” Russell confirmed, before the FBI agent suggested making her ex’s death look like a suicide.
“Yes, that would be amazing,” Russell responded.
In short, prosecutors alleged that Russell eventually stopped soliciting murder from would-be spell casters and turned to more conventional means to carry out a hit, cutting against the defense argument that she was not sane.
Prosecutors said that the stalking charge was connected to Russell’s conduct during the child custody battle that she went on to lose. She admittedly recruited “J.S.” to travel from Michigan and perpetrate a harassment campaign that involved the harasser posing as a local news reporter and using a burner phone to barrage victim R.C. with “defamatory allegations of misconduct.”
The harasser left R.C. “accusatory voicemails from the phone provided by Russell on R.C.’s phone, entering R.C.’s garage and leaving a note inside the garage pretending to be a reporter writing a derogatory story that could involve R.C., and by leaving fliers, with R.C.’s photograph and other personal identifying information, on cars at R.C.’s office,” prosecutors said. “The fliers contained defamatory allegations of misconduct and were intended to be viewed by R.C.’s co-workers, supervisors, and potentially clients.”
Prosecutors said the defendant will face up to 15 years behind bars when she’s sentenced on the last day of July, but the plea agreement under Rule 11 (c)(1)(C) detailed that Russell’s defense agreed not to seek less than 97 months (8 years) while the prosecution agreed not to ask for more than 144 months (12 years) in federal prison.
The judge accepted Russell’s guilty plea but said he needs to review the case further before reaching a decision on whether to accept the proposed punishment.
“The Court accepts the defendant’s plea of guilty but defers its decision as to the acceptance or rejection of the sentence called for by the plea agreement until it has an opportunity to consider the Presentence Investigation Report,” a Monday order from Hale explained.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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