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SALT LAKE CITY — A man who police say tried to hire a hitman while he was incarcerated to kill his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend — even after he was sentenced to prison for stalking the same woman — now faces new charges.
Lorenzo Gutierrez, 28, of Salt Lake City, was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court with two counts of criminal solicitation to commit murder, a first-degree felony.
In April 2020, while Gutierrez was incarcerated at the Salt Lake County Jail, he offered another inmate meth, heroin and $10,000 cash in exchange for killing Gutierrez's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend and for pictures of the deed, according to charging documents.
Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies then put a recording device in Gutierrez's cell and recorded him talking to his cellmate about wanting to "smoke" and "stomp out" the woman and several other people, the charges state, and that "he wanted things handled while he was in jail so that he wouldn't be a suspect."
Investigators then used a confidential informant to give Gutierrez the name of a fictitious person willing to carry out his request. At the direction of Gutierrez, the informant wrote a letter to the fictional hitman, who was actually an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the charges state.
Gutierrez also called the undercover agent from the jail several times and discussed plans to have his former girlfriend killed, the charges state. He offered the agent a car title as a down payment, and in June 2020 Gutierrez offered his government-issued stimulus check as a down payment, according to the charges.
In July 2020, Gutierrez was transferred to the Utah State Prison on a conviction of stalking the woman for calling her from the Salt Lake County Jail, according to charging documents. He has twice been convicted of stalking the woman, who obtained a permanent stalking injunction against him in March 2020, charging documents state.
After being transferred to prison, Gutierrez continued to make calls trying to arrange the hit, according to the charges.
