It is not every day that you find yourself in the middle of an assassination attempt. Back in May, Oklahoma City citizen Tinsley Keefe responded to a craigslist ad. After emailing the poster, Tinsley set up a meeting in hopes of landing the modeling/acting contract of her dreams. Instead, Tinsley only got a nightmare.
Several days after scheduling, Tinsley arrived at the meeting and met her new employer. They sat down to discuss details. The woman, who introduced herself as Samantha Dowry, then took things to the next level.
“When I got there, this gal that called herself Samantha Dowdy, or something like that,” Tinsley begins. “She got some information from me, and said ‘oh and by the way, this is not about acting and modeling’.”
The “explanation” came soon after: the woman claimed to be a member of the “Israeli Intelligence Agency”. She wanted Tinsley to travel to Israel and kill a taxi driver that was supposedly a member of ISIS.
“I was like ‘why would you ask me?’ She said because she was recruited back when she was in college, she’d been doing it for a number of years, but couldn’t do it this time around because she was pregnant.”
After introducing the true reason behind the craigslist ad, the woman proceeded to give Tinsley a set of detailed instructions. This included a printed document outlining the assassination, different codes, and the promise of $1,000 spending money for the trip – plus an additional $4,000 upon completion.
At that point, Tinsley was instructed to pour the vials into the target’s beverage. After the target would either be hospitalized or lose his life, she would then switch hotels until her return flight.
“She had all these pictures and a slideshow presentation all ready to go. She had codes…and was teaching me how to do those,” Tinsley describes. “She also said that the reason she wanted an American female tourist to do it was because they would be less likely to be suspected.”
Throughout the meeting, Tinsley Keefe tried to take the assassination details in stride. With concern for her safety, she successfully kept her wits and made a clean getaway the second she could. Tinsley called a lawyer friend once she was in a secure setting, who then advised her to contact the FBI.
Unfortunately, the FBI took several weeks to respond; leaving Tinsley looking over her shoulder and fearing for her safety constantly. After the detectives finally got ahold of her, the investigation began and things finally started to come together.
“Samantha Dowry” was discovered to be an alias belonging to Danielle Layman, a Ponca City citizen determined to murder her ex-husband by hiring an assassin over the internet. Layman’s biggest mistake, however, was not considering the biggest factor: random models looking for work on craigslist are not normally assassins.
At the very least, Danielle Layman is now in custody and Wedding Officiant Tinsley Keefe can finally rest easy. Let us just hope that others are not scavenging the internet for assassins (that are not actually assassins).
