Naman Shrestha
A regular morning walk turned deadly for a married man in October 2020 when the neighborhood of Oak Cliff in Dallas, Texas, echoed the horrific sounds of multiple gunshots. Jamie Faith was found dead right outside his house, while the shooter fled the scene in his pickup truck. The grieving wife, Jennifer Faith, soon turned out to be the orchestrator of the crime as the police gathered several pieces of evidence against her. The complicated case is explored in detail in CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Plot to Kill Jamie Faith’ and NBC’s ‘Dateline: Losing Faith,’ both of which feature insightful interviews with individuals connected to the victim and the investigation.
Jennifer Faith Manipulated Her Former Boyfriend Into Killing Her Husband
It was in 2012 when Jennifer Lynne and Jamie Faith exchanged marital vows in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jamie also warmly welcomed her daughter, Amber, from her first marriage. In fact, he legally adopted her when she turned 18. Jennifer worked in healthcare administration while Jamie worked for American Airlines. They lived in Arizona until 2017, after which they relocated to Dallas, Texas, as he got a promotion at work. In 2020, the couple led a seemingly picture-perfect life in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. Long before her marriage to Jamie, Jennifer had a romantic history with a man named Darrin Lopez, a Special Forces Army veteran whom she had dated in high school. After several years without any contact, Jennifer and Darrin got back in touch around April 2020.
In the following months, she used to send him gifts and money regularly. In order to get Darrin on her side, she also made a fake email account in the name of her husband and used it to falsely accuse Jamie of physically and sexually abusing her, using downloaded stock images that depict injuries. By pretending to be one of her friends, she made another fake email account and convinced Darrin that the allegations were legitimate. Several months later, in October 2020, Darrin drove all the way from his house in Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee, to the Faiths’ residence in Dallas to commit a crime orchestrated by Jennifer. On the fateful morning of October 9, 2020, Jamie and Jennifer stepped outside into the Oak Cliff neighborhood to walk their dog.
Within a minute or so, Darrin ambushed the family and shot Jamie multiple times before fleeing the scene in his black pickup truck, which had a distinctive sticker on the back. When the authorities arrived at the scene, she described the killing while sobbing: “I turned around and I just saw this person shoot and shoot. I couldn’t believe – I didn’t know him. Like, why? A lot of shots, five, six, maybe, I feel like. And he just kept going, and I’m like, stop it!” She added, “And then I saw the person turn and like, just, dark eyes, coming toward me. And so I started – I yelled no, and I started to run. And he tackled me to the ground. He was trying to attack me the whole time I was screaming.” When she learned that the authorities were focusing on the sticker to find the killer’s car, she texted him and advised him to remove it.
Jennifer Faith is Currently Serving Her Life Sentence
Nearly a month after Jamie Faith’s demise, Jennifer Faith initiated the life insurance policy worth $629,000, about which she kept Darrin updated. They intended to use the money to purchase a property for themselves in Tennessee. In order to show their support for Jennifer, the community also funded the GoFundMe page generously, which she used to pay off a couple of credit cards that Darrin had been using. About three months after the murder, Darrin was taken into custody on January 11, 2021, in Dickson, Tennessee. On the same day, Jennifer was brought in for questioning as her relationship with him was suspicious. Although she denied having a sexual relationship with Darrin, she admitted that they had been texting each other daily for several months.
According to reports, the police found out that she had sent a large amount of cash through a Venmo account, gave him her credit cards, and even purchased flight tickets for him and his daughters. Thus, on February 24, 2021, she was charged with obstruction of justice, but she pleaded not guilty. Upon digging deep into her background, the police learned about how she weaved a false narrative about her first husband being abusive to her then-husband, Rick Ulraub, in the 2000s. Now that she was in police custody, the detectives searched her house, where they came across the emails on her computer, connecting her to the deceased and the accused. When they found out that she was the one behind the fake allegations of abuse, they charged her with murder for hire in September 2021.
Eventually, on February 7, 2022, Jennifer Faith pleaded guilty to one count of use of interstate commerce in the commission of murder-for-hire and admitted to her role in the shooting death of her husband, Jamie Faith, on October 9, 2020. By doing so, the prosecutors dropped the obstruction charge and took the death sentence off the table. Following the plea deal, Darrin also confessed to killing Jamie. He claimed that Jennifer took advantage of him being in a vulnerable state after the traumatic brain injury he suffered in the Army. Finally, on June 21, 2022, Jennifer Faith was sentenced to life in prison for masterminding the murder of her husband. On top of that, she was also ordered to pay $6,500 in restitution to her late husband’s family for the funeral and a $250,000 fine. From what we can tell, she is seemingly incarcerated at a Texas prison facility.
