Man Gets 7 1/2 Years for Plot on Husband

A Wisconsin man on Monday was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for teaming up with his girlfriend in an ill-fated attempt to get $300,000 in insurance proceeds by having her husband killed.

Defendant William Lemke’s lawyer asked U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler for a five-year sentence. He portrayed Lemke as a love-blinded man who allowed his conniving sweetheart to entangle him in her plan to hire a hit man to poison her husband, Orange County attorney Richard Thibault.

Prosecutors sought a minimum term of nine years, but Stotler ultimately chose an intermediate sentence, noting that while Lemke helped manage the scheme, the ex-truck driver had lived a law-abiding life until then.

Margo J. Thibault-Lemke, 42, formerly of Tustin, was sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison on Nov. 4 for masterminding the murder-for-hire plot in 1987 and 1988. Jurors found that the pair hired four hit men, but they, one after another, failed in their attempts to kill Thibault. He was never harmed.

Thibault and Lemke later married. They were convicted of murder for hire, wire fraud and conspiracy.

Defense attorney C. Thomas McDonald asked for Stotler’s understanding, saying that sometimes a lover can be “so beguiling . . . that they can dominate” a weaker person. Thibault exploited Lemke’s emotional weaknesses, he said.

“Bill Lemke should have run--not walked--he should have run from this woman,” McDonald said. “But love clouded that judgment. . . . Bill Lemke is every bit (as much) a victim as Richard Thibault.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Elana S. Artson scoffed at that argument. She pointed out that Lemke, 41, coolly offered each hit man payment from the insurance proceeds and exchanged many phone calls with Margo Thibault to discuss the arrangements.

“We’re not talking about someone blinded by love,” Artson told Stotler. “He had many opportunities to come to his senses, and he didn’t do the best thing; he did the worst thing. . . . He decided to participate with Margo Thibault and be her right-hand man.”

The four hit men, including Thibault-Lemke’s stepbrother, were granted immunity and testified against Lemke and Thibault-Lemke. One, a transsexual who allegedly wanted the money for sex-change surgery, revealed the plot to law enforcement officials and agreed to tape-record a phone call to Thibault-Lemke, in which they discussed plans to poison her husband with curare, a muscle relaxant.