SFGATE: Teens in a love triangle hatch a very bungled murder plot
Published on October 30, 2019 at 06:34PM by Antonia Noori Farzan, The Washington Post
Roaring up to the Ki-Be Red Apple Market in a Dodge pickup truck, Dalton Pullum and Matthew Phalen had no idea they were about to watch a poorly conceived murder plot unravel before their eyes.
The two high school seniors just wanted to grab lunch in between classes in Benton City, a farming community in the rural eastern half of Washington. But when they pulled up to the grocery store on Nov. 15, 2017, they noticed a strange man skulking around the parking lot in broad daylight. He kept crouching down to hide between parked cars, and, even more suspiciously, was wearing a hoodie and a mask that looked as if someone had cut eye holes in a red T-shirt.
"It was like he didn't have time to get a real mask," Pullum, then 18, told the Tri-City Herald. "Like it was hastily done."
As it turned out, the teens had inadvertently stumbled into a bungled attempt to execute one of their own classmates. A group of fellow students at Kiona-Benton City High School had hatched an ill-fated plot to kill 18-year-old Ryan Vaughn with a kitchen knife during their lunch break, only to be thwarted by freshmen on scooters. The bizarre saga culminated on Monday, when Fe Hadley, Vaughn's ex-girlfriend, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
The half-baked plan started out as a joke, the Herald reported. Several weeks before the failed murder attempt, a group of teenagers were sitting around, griping about their dislike of Vaughn, then a senior. "What if he died?" someone asked facetiously.
A few members of the group took the question seriously. Hadley, then 16, had briefly dated Vaughn. And Jeremiah Cunningham, who had once dated Hadley, still harbored feelings for her.
Vaughn would later tell detectives that he broke up with Hadley because Cunningham was too protective and overbearing, putting a wedge in their...
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