Jennifer Faith’s mug shot, via the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department
Federal authorities say the Oak Cliff woman whose husband was gunned down while they were walking their dogs in South Winnetka on the morning after their 15th wedding anniversary orchestrated the man’s death.
A federal indictment issued today alleges that Jennifer Faith manipulated her husband’s killer into believing, falsely, that he was physically and sexually abusing her.
Jamie Faith, an American Airlines IT director, was gunned down just after 7 a.m. Oct. 9, 2020.
At the time, Jennifer Faith told police that a man in a black pickup truck — which was captured on neighbors’ doorbell cameras — approached them, shot her husband and attempted to use duct tape on her wrists.
Investigators believe her ex-boyfriend, Darrin Lopez, drove from Tennessee to kill her husband. He has been charged with murder. Police revealed in February that she and Lopez had exchanged hundreds of text messages a day. They also exchanged messages following the murder, including talk of removing an identifying “T” sticker from his truck.
She was charged with obstruction of justice at that time.
The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Texas on Wednesday charged Jennifer Faith, 49, with interstate commission of murder-for-hire. If convicted, she could face life in federal prison or the death penalty.
The U.S. Department of Justice called the crime “depraved and calculated.”
Ms. Faith used two phony email accounts to correspond with Mr. Lopez, assuming the identities of her own husband and one of her friends in order to falsely convince Mr. Lopez that her husband was physically and sexually abusing her.
“She preyed on her boyfriend’s protective instinct and his pocketbook in order to convince him to execute her husband,” Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah stated in a release. “Jamie Faith’s brutal murder was a tragedy. His death has been a double blow to his family and friends, who had just begun to absorb the news of his murder when they were confronted with evidence of his wife’s alleged involvement. We are committed to getting justice for Jamie – and to holding both Ms. Faith and Mr. Lopez accountable for their alleged crimes.”
The indictment alleges that Jennifer Faith used a fake Gmail account starting in April 2020, posing as her husband to taunt Lopez with descriptions of violence.
Here are examples the U.S. Attorney’s Office provided:
“I am telling you to stay away from my family,” she wrote in an email to Mr. Lopez on April 10 while posing as Mr. Faith.
“Enjoy knowing you can’t do a [expletive] thing about it,” she wrote in another email to Mr. Lopez on May 9, attaching close-up photos of purported injuries.
She used another fake account to pose as her friend, and she used images from the internet and claimed they were injuries her husband had caused to her. Here are some examples of emails from that account.
“Jamie slapped Jen … then he sent the pic of him choking her,” she wrote in an email to Mr. Lopez on May 13 while posing as her friend. “I am asking if you are willing to get involved and help Jen get out of this situation.”
“Jamie is abusing Jen today,” she wrote in another email to Mr. Lopez. “Any ideas how we can help her?”
“I know I won’t feel better about her situation until she is out of the house away from him or she lets me put a bullet in Jamie’s head,” Mr. Lopez replied by email on May 20.
“I am also very concerned and if it were up to me, I would tell you to go for it with your idea — lol; I’ll give you an alibi,” Ms. Faith responded, still posing as her friend.
“Darrin, I talked to Jenn – he’s burning her, among other things,” she continued in another email sent to Mr. Lopez on July 26.
The Oak Cliff community raised money for Faith after her husband was killed. The feds say she withdrew $58,000 from the fund and spent it on Lopez and his family, including airline tickets for him and his daughters and FedEx charges to ship him a big-screen TV.
She also initiated a life-insurance claim, seeking $629,000.
On Dec. 29, she texted Lopez: “Ok, so life insurance. They aren’t processing the claim yet because when they spoke to Det Walton in November, he told them I couldn’t be ruled out as a suspect.”
A few days after Lopez was arrested in January, she texted another person asking to send him a message: “I’ve just needed to be cautious because every communication is being monitored,” she said. “Please tell him ASAP that I will always be his.”
