Kentucky man who arranged murder of man dating his ex-girlfriend gets 40 years in prison
A Kentucky man who was upset that his girlfriend broke up with him and went back to her ex-husband has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for having the ex-husband killed.
Freddy Manuel Gonzalez, 40, of Bowling Green, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of murder through use of a firearm during crime of violence, according to the U.S Department of Justice.
The man he hired for the murder, 26-year-old Xavior Caine Posey, pleaded guilty to the same charge and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Gonzalez, a former Kentucky Army National Guard soldier, hired Posey in late December 2020 to kill Brian Russell, according to the court record.
Gonzalez ran a cafe at The Mint Gaming Hall in Simpson County at the time, and Posey worked for him.
Russell, 43, and his wife of 16 years, Miranda Russell, had divorced in 2018.
She started dating Gonzalez in February 2020, but then broke up with him in October to return to her ex-husband, according to court documents.
For a couple of months, Miranda Russell alternated between dating both men before breaking up with Gonzalez for good in mid-December, Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Weiser and Madison T. Sewell said in a sentencing memorandum.
After that, Gonzalez “obsessively stalked,” her, deluging her with text messages, placing a tracking device in her car and spying on her, the prosecutors said.
Gonzalez ultimately decided the only way to get Miranda Russell back was to “eliminate the competition” by killing Brian Russell, according to the prosecution memo.
Gonzalez offered Posey $2,000, a pickup truck and a raise at the cafe to kill Russell, according to prosecutors.
He knew Posey was a drug dealer, and sweetened the deal by falsely telling Posey he could probably find marijuana and methamphetamine at Russell’s house.
Early on Dec. 30, 2020, Posey got a friend to drive him to Russell’s house.
Posey knocked on the door and when Russell answered from inside, Posey said he had car trouble and needed jumper cables.
When Russell opened the door, Posey shot him twice in the chest and once in the head with the .380-caliber pistol Gonzalez had provided, then fled, according to the court record.
Soon after, Gonzalez and Posey met, took apart the gun and cleaned it with bleach, and then threw it away on the banks of the Barren River.
Franklin police searched Miranda Russell’s car as part of the investigation and found the tracking device. When they removed it and it shut off, Gonzalez called the police department and later admitted he had put the device in her car.
As a result, police charged him with stalking and got a warrant to search his cell phone, which turned up messages implicating him in the murder.
Gonzalez’s defense attorneys, Brian Butler and Michael Denbow, sought a sentence of 25 years for him, arguing he was suffering a mental health crisis when he hired Posey to kill Russell.
Gonzalez had suffered trauma as a child from his father, a violent drunk, and a family acquaintance who sexually abused him, according to the defense attorneys.
The break up with Miranda Russell, coming on top of the stress of running the cafe and his unresolved mental health problems, sent Gonzalez into deep depression.
He became convinced the only way out of his despair was to be with Russell, his attorneys said.
Prosecutors pushed for the 40-year sentence, however, calling the crime “a cold-blooded, calculated murder orchestrated by Gonzalez because he was angry that his girlfriend rejected him.”
U.S. District Judge Greg N. Stivers sentenced Gonzalez and Posey Nov. 6 in federal court in Bowling Green.
There is no parole in the federal court system so each man will have to serve at least 85% of the sentence.
