Teen says someone hacked her Facebook account to lure would-be murder victim
When a Benton City teen heard that a friend planned to kill a classmate, she didn’t believe him.
And she played no part in helping plan an attack behind a market during lunch, she said.
Fe Hadley, 18, took the stand in her own defense Friday and claimed someone hacked into her Facebook account and sent messages for two days trying to get Ryan Vaughn to meet her behind the store.
“You never took an active part in any plan to kill Ryan?” asked her attorney Nicholas Blount.
“No,” answered Hadley.
Hadley, now 18, is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Benton County prosecutors claim she worked with fellow classmate Jeremiah Cunningham to lure Vaughn behind the market on Nov. 15, 2017.
Earlier this week, Vaughn told jurors about his brief relationship with Hadley and how it soured, in part, because of her over-protective, eccentric friend, Cunningham.
On Thursday, Cunningham, 18, testified that Hadley was the “lure and leader” of the murder plot and that he was just the muscle.
Surveillance cameras show him wearing a mask and waiting behind the store with a large knife.
He previously pleaded guilty and is serving 10 years in prison. Another teen Gabriel Pfliger also has been sentenced for his role.
Vaughn testified earlier this week that he didn’t go behind the store that day because he decided following a stranger wearing a mask was a bad idea. He walked away and returned to class.
Hadley told jurors that Cunningham came to her and said he was angry at Vaughn, and wanted to kill him. She said she didn’t believe him.
She thought he planned to leave Vaughn with just some bruises and a black eye.
However, on Wednesday, another classmate testified that Hadley claimed her boyfriend was going to murder Vaughn as a birthday present.
But Hadley described herself as being too squeamish to participate in a murder, claiming she’s not even able to watch car crash videos or science lab dissections.
“I never said anything about taking part in this,” she read Friday from her original statement to investigators.
Facebook messages
Much of Hadley’s testimony Friday afternoon focused on a series of Facebook messages with Vaughn.
The messages urged him to come with her behind the store across from the high school. Many of them suggested a sexual encounter.
She said she never saw most of those messages that came from her account. And she said she is good with grammar and spelling so she would not have misused “to” for “too” or “its” and “it’s.”
She also said she never uses common messaging abbreviations like “LOL” (laugh out loud) or “IK” (I know), which were used in those Facebook messages.
The only messages she admitted typing were when she acted confused about Vaughn’s replies.
Her attorney asked Cunningham earlier this week if he knew how to set up fake online accounts, but the teen said he didn’t.
He did testify that he would like go to college for computer game design and likes computers.
Hadley is back on the stand on Monday in Benton County Superior Court.
Reporter Kristin M. Kraemer contributed to this report.