Registered Sex Offender Admits to Murder-for-Hire Plot Against 12-Year-Old He Lured and Assaulted

Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

Registered Sex Offender Admits to Murder-for-Hire Plot Against 12-Year-Old He Lured and Assaulted

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A 30-year-old Rhode Island man has pleaded guilty in federal court to luring a 12-year-old girl from her middle school, sexually assaulting her, and then attempting to hire a hitman from prison to silence her.
Chandler J. Cardente, already a registered sex offender, entered the plea Thursday to three charges: enticement of a minor, committing a felony while required to register, and interstate murder-for-hire, Acting U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom announced.
Online deception and abduction
Investigators say Cardente posed as a 17-year-old on social media to befriend the Burrillville Middle School student in the fall of 2021. On Dec. 10, after classes let out, the girl walked across a soccer field, through nearby woods, and climbed into Cardente’s car on Route 102.
When the child was reported missing, Burrillville police tracked her online messages and identified Cardente as the man she was with. Realizing officers were closing in, he pushed the girl from the vehicle on Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick. Warwick police soon found her curled up on the roadside; she told officers she had been assaulted.
Plot hatched behind bars
Cardente was arrested later that day in Cranston and booked into the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI). While awaiting trial, he phoned what he believed was a go-between for a contract killer, offering $200 cash and about $1,500 in equipment to ensure the girl “ended up dead” because, he said, she was “a witness.” The “contractor” was actually an undercover police officer recording the call.
Prior record and penalties
Cardente had previously been convicted in state court of child molestation and was under lifetime registration requirements when he committed the new crimes. Federal prosecutors say he now faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison on the enticement count alone, with potential decades more because of the murder-for-hire scheme and his status as a registered offender.
He remains held without bail at the ACI. Sentencing is scheduled for April 23 in U.S. District Court, where Cardente also faces separate state charges stemming from the assault and abduction.
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