Inside a Haddonfield man's plan to kill teenage child-porn victim
CAMDEN – A Haddonfield man has admitted he tried to recruit a hitman to murder a 14-year-old boy, authorities say.
John Musbach, 31, wanted the death of a youngster whom he had previously victimized in a child-pornography crime, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey.
Musbach searched the “dark web” in May 2016 to find a website that offered murder-for-hire services, then paid the operator $20,000 in bitcoin, says a criminal complaint.
The hired-killer website was a scam, however, and Musbach was arrested three years later after an informant alerted authorities to his activities.
The boy was never harmed, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
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One crime leads to another
A criminal complaint says Musbach's search for a hitman had its origins in another crime committed in the summer of 2015.
That’s when Musbach, then living in Galloway, exchanged sexually explicit videos during online contacts with a 13-year-old boy in New York state, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The child’s parents alerted police after leaning of the contacts in September 2015, and Musbach was charged in March 2016 with endangering the welfare of a child.
While awaiting trial, Musbach sought to have the boy killed to eliminate a potential witness, the complaint alleges.
It claims he paid the hitman website after its operator told him a 14-year-old was not too young to be murdered.
Musbach repeatedly messaged the administrator while waiting for the murder to occur, then demanded a refund after being directed to pay an additional $5,000.
The administrator then revealed his website was a scam, and demanded $10,000 to refrain from reporting Musbach to the police.
The complaint does not say if Musbach paid the operator’s demand.
Musbach eventually avoided trial by pleading guilty to the child-porn offense after he'd been denied entry into a court-diversion program in Atlantic County. A Superior Court judge in Mays Landing gave him a two-year suspended sentence with parole supervision for life.
Investigators learned of the murder plot in May 2019 from an informant who had hacked the hitman website.
The complaint notes a hard drive taken from Musbach's home showed Google searches for "Do gun shows take credit cards," "death by chloroform" and "where to buy chloroform."
Other search topics included various poisons and "Kill all Jews."
What’s the dark web?
The complaint describes the dark web as “widely used criminal marketplaces operating on the Internet.”
People can use the typically encrypted sites to buy and sell illegal items and services “with greater anonymity than is possible on the traditional Internet,” the complaint says.
The bitcoin demanded by the hitman website’s operator is a virtual currency that can fluctuate in value. A payment of 40 bitcoin has a current value of almost $952,000, according to walletinvestor.com.
What happens next?
Musbach pleaded guilty Thursday to using the Internet with the intent that a murder be committed, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Defense attorney Rocco Cipparone of Haddon Heights said his client "decided to put this matter behind him and accept his responsibility without a trial."
"We now look forward to putting forth in context at sentencing, appropriate mitigating information, and positive information, about Mr. Musbach," Cipparone said.
He said the guilty plea "appropriately limits Mr. Musbach’s sentencing exposure for reasons which will be expounded upon at sentencing”.
U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez scheduled sentencing for June 13 in Camden federal court.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal..
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Haddonfield NJ man admits plan to murder child porn victim
