By Denis J. O’Malley
Citizen’s Voice
SCRANTON, Pa. — The brazen plot took hold in the mind-numbing monotony of prison. According to investigators, a Plymouth man, reluctant to face trial on child sex abuse charges, solicited two of his fellow inmates to kill the people who had put him there - a Hanover Township police officer, a Luzerne County prosecutor and a magisterial district judge.
Had Richard Allen Park Jr. succeeded — had the inmates accepted his offer of $1,000 each and not reported the alleged plot to prison officials — Luzerne County could very well have endured its deadliest massacre since George Banks killed 13 people in 1983.
“It’s an alarming situation,” Luzerne County District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll said Thursday, after authorities in Lackawanna County charged Park with two counts of retaliation against a prosecutor or judicial official and one count each of criminal solicitation to commit murder and intimidation of witnesses or victims.
Park, 24, of Plymouth, had been incarcerated at the Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton while awaiting trial in Luzerne County on charges he sexually assaulted a 4-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl last October in Hanover Township.
Full Story: Inmate’s hit list included assistant DA, judge, cop