O.C. Attorney’s Ex-Wife Held in Plot to Kill Him : Indictment: He has lived in fear since FBI warned him in 1987 that she and her lover planned his murder.

Richard D. Thibault left his wife in 1987 when he discovered she was having an affair with a truck driver.

He thought no more about it until the FBI called him four months later and warned that his wife was plotting to kill him.

He moved, refused to give his address even to his mother and “looked over my shoulder a lot,” he said. His wife packed up everything in their Tustin home and moved with her lover to Wisconsin.

For nearly four years, Thibault, an Orange County attorney, did not tell anyone of the alleged plot against him, for fear no one would believe him. He never even mentioned it to his wife, who continued to send cards to his law office.

“She wrote me a card at Thanksgiving and said, ‘Let’s meet in Las Vegas.’ All lovey-dovey,” Thibault said.

But on Friday, the U.S. attorney’s office unsealed a murder-for-hire indictment against 41-year-old Margo J. Thibault, charging that she and her lover tried to hire three different men to kill her husband and collect on a $200,000 insurance policy she had purchased without his knowledge.

Among other things, she allegedly plotted to poison him with curare, the indictment said.

Margo Thibault and William E. Lemke, also 41, were arrested Wednesday in Wisconsin, and on Friday a federal magistrate in Milwaukee ordered the pair returned to Orange County to stand trial, authorities said.

“The whole plot most likely was just a way to get money,” Thibault said. “But after all those years together, to put it mildly, it hurts your feelings.”

Thibault, 47, said he met Margo in about 1981, when she was working as a clerk in Orange County Municipal Court. She had an 11-year-old son and had been recently divorced. They married about a year later.

“The only thing I can say, in hindsight, is that she always craved the better things in life, the diamond rings and that kind of stuff, but that’s not unusual, either,” Thibault said.

In the spring of 1987, he said, he began to notice “missing money-type things, unexplained absences,” which he eventually discovered were linked to Lemke.

“He was a truck driver traveling through the area,” Thibault said. “We had a CB radio, and I think she met him that way.”

He moved out in July, 1987. He alleges that his wife then broke into both the friend’s apartment where he was staying and his law office, stole checks and forged his signature to cash them.

Thibault said he reported the incidents to police in Tustin, Santa Ana and Garden Grove, but to no avail.

“The police couldn’t be interested less,” he said. “They considered it a domestic dispute.”

In November, 1987, he said, the FBI asked to see him to warn him about the alleged plot to kill him, but the agents would not tell him how they learned of it.

“I know it sounds crazy, but they said they had a duty to warn me,” he said. “I said, ‘What am I supposed to do, look over my shoulder?’ ”

The following month, he said, “she and Lemke pulled up a moving truck and packed every stick and picture and were gone.”

Thibault said his lawyer told the judge handling his divorce case about the FBI’s warning, and the divorce hearing in February, 1988, was guarded by a contingent of bailiffs. Margo Thibault, however, never showed up.

She had left California shortly after being questioned by FBI agents, and later married Lemke in Wisconsin, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Paul L. Seave.

Seave declined to comment Friday on how the FBI had uncovered the alleged plot.

The indictment, issued late last month by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, charges Margo Thibault and Lemke with 18 counts of conspiracy, use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire, and wire fraud.

The indictment charges that beginning in at least November, 1987, the pair attempted to hire three different Colorado men to kill Richard Thibault.

Thibault said his ex-wife’s mother and brother lived in the Denver area, but he said he had never heard of the three men named in the indictment: Jerry Redman, Anthony Miller and David Lamb.

On Dec. 3 or 4, 1987, the indictment alleges, Redman traveled by car from Colorado to Orange County to murder Thibault, but failed to carry out the plan.

Later that month, Lemke drove Miller from Colorado to Orange County, but again they failed to kill Thibault, the indictment said.

Some time in mid-December, Margo Thibault and Lemke met with Lamb in Orange County to discuss the murder, the indictment said.

In early January, 1988, Margo Thibault bought an airline ticket for Lamb to fly to California, but canceled the ticket the next day for fear she would be linked to the murder, the indictment said.

The indictment stated that the three men were hired separately but does not say whether they knew one another, how they intended to kill Thibault or why they failed. They have not been charged in the case.

The indictment said that Margo Thibault told Lamb in a telephone conversation that she had canceled the airline ticket for him because the police were investigating her, and she asked if Lamb could get curare to poison her husband.

Curare is a muscle relaxant derived from a South American plant that some natives used on poison arrows. Chemically similar compounds are used today for medical purposes, said Richard F. Shaw, chief toxicologist for the San Diego coroner’s office.

“It’s hard to trace,” Shaw said. “You have to know what you’re looking for.”

Thibault said his wife “was not particularly well-educated” and had no particular medical knowledge, but she was an avid reader.

“Maybe she read it somewhere,” he said.

Thibault said authorities asked him whether he had bought a life insurance policy but gave him no idea of the extent of the alleged plot against him.

“They just said she had tried to hire someone to kill me,” he said. “I didn’t know it was several people involved and more than one plot.”

As the years went by, Thibault said, he did not tell his friends of the alleged plot because there had been no arrest and he feared people would not believe him.

“For at least a year, nobody except my brother knew where I lived,” he said. “I didn’t even tell my mother. But that’s of minimal use when you’re an attorney and people know where you work.”

About a year ago, he said, Margo Thibault called him at his office and asked whether he would help her son, who had recently moved to California.

“I said no,” he said. “ ‘Under the circumstances, you’ve got to be kidding,’ ” he recalled telling her.

Nevertheless, he said, “Margo continues to write me cards on a regular basis, including (last) Christmas . . . saying, ‘Hey hon, let’s get together, I really miss you.’ ”

Thibault said he has not been contacted by federal authorities recently, and only learned of the arrests through press reports from Milwaukee.

“Frankly, in the last several years I’ve tried to forget it,” he said.

In Milwaukee on Friday, U.S. Magistrate Robert L. Bittner set bail for Margo Thibault and Lemke at $25,000 each, but did not set a date for their return to California, court officials said. The pair have not indicated how they intend to plead.