A Hudson Valley woman who sought out a hit man to kill her brother-in-law — telling an undercover accomplice “rat poison can do a great job” — has been sentenced to 9½ years in prison.
Reshma Massarone, of Pine Hill, was sentenced in White Plains federal court on Tuesday after pleading guilty in March to murder-for-hire.
Massarone plotted with a police officer from her native Guyana to enlist a hit man to take out her relative for what prosecutors described as the “low price” of $10,000 between July and August of 2023, unaware her supposed partner-in-crime was a cop who reported her to stateside law enforcement and helped them build a case.
The feds said Massarone sought to undermine her actions and potentially perjured herself when she pleaded guilty earlier this year. Massarone said she had an order of protection against the victim and that she’d ordered a bodyguard to accompany her to her grandmother’s funeral — where they were slated to cross paths — and that it hadn’t been her intention to have him murdered when she wired the bodyguard $2,500, but he convinced her.
In asking the judge to impose a steep term ahead of sentencing, prosecutors said a slew of text messages made clear Massarone’s claims were flat-out false and “that she was mastermind of the whole plan and someone who already knew what she was paying for.”
Correspondence cited in court papers shows how the 40-year-old Massarone, a bank manager, became increasingly frustrated by a delay in the hit, swearing on her kids’ lives that her accomplice would get paid if the hit man “got rid” of her brother-in-law and even promising him other “jobs.”
The feds cited CCTV evidence showing that Massarone wired $2,500 to the Guyanese officer to pass on to the hit man, after which the cooperator told her it would be carried out with a shooting and that there was “no turning back.”
“Right. No turning back,” Massarone said, according to prosecutors.
When more time passed, and the hit still hadn’t been carried out, Massarone told her accomplice, “rat poison can do a great job,” and lamented, “You is all talk and no action.”
She then threatened to find another assassin to get the job done, according to charging docs.
“Either way, if I find somebody to do the job you’re going to get blame, so cut the bulls–t and let’s get it done,” Massarone was quoted in one message.
In her filings to the court ahead of sentencing, Massarone’s lawyer said she had been harassed by the victim for 25 years, including contacting her employers to have her fired and trying to get her daughter disqualified from a beauty pageant.
In response, the feds wrote that while “it is apparent that familial relations were severely bitter,” she’d never “indicated that she felt that she or her family were in any danger at all.”
“[Massarone] preferred to give her money to a hit man rather than continue to pay her lawyer in family court,” prosecutors wrote, also adding that at one point, she identified who she wanted to target “next” to the undercover — a woman who would be an easy hit because she mostly stayed indoors alone, Massarone told him.
An attorney for Massarone did not respond to requests for comment.
“The defendant devised a chilling plan to have a member of her own family murdered for the low price of ten thousand dollars,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose jurisdiction also encompasses the Bronx, Westchester, and several upstate counties.
“Her plan was unthinkably heartless. For this depraved crime, Reshma Massarone will spend 114 months in federal prison.”
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