Convicted child sex offender sought assassin to kill victim’s family, FL cops say
A man accused of sexually assaulting a young girl for years tried to hire an assassin to kill her and her family to make his legal troubles go away, Florida authorities said.
Leland Harper, 63, initially fled to Portugal to escape prosecution, according to the FBI. But he was caught, and in 2023 he was convicted of 73 charges related to child sex offenses and witness tampering in Oregon, the local district attorney announced.
He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Oregon, and he still faces a lawsuit from the girl’s family as well as prosecution in Florida for crimes he’s accused of committing in Sarasota County when the child was under the age of 12.
His attorney, Mark Zimmerman, told McClatchy News that he hasn’t seen all the evidence yet, but the charges are based off information from another inmate who was facing serious charges.
“I know that that individual was given a deal and has been released from jail,” Zimmerman said, adding the state’s case so far seems “flimsy.”
In February, the inmate reported that Harper offered to pay $30,000 to kill the young girl he was convicted of abusing, as well as her sibling and her parents before his trial in southwest Florida, a detective with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office wrote in an arrest affidavit.
Harper hoped to put an end to the civil lawsuit, help his appeal go through in Oregon, and acquit him of charges in Florida, the witness told law enforcement.
“No face no case,” the inmate recorded Harper saying, according to the affidavit. “If there are no witnesses, there is no trial.”
Harper asked the inmate to stage it as “a murder-suicide at the hand of the father/husband,” deputies said.
“Emails were to be sent to various people from the father/husband’s phone,” a detective wrote in the affidavit. “The email was to be a confession in which the father/husband was to take responsibility for the sexual abuse of his daughter and admit to having set up (Harper). The email was to read that (Harper) was innocent of all charges.”
Harper’s wife wired nearly $30,000 for the killings to be carried out, deputies said. The informant had already gone to law enforcement with the information.
Four charges of solicitation to commit premeditated murder were filed against Harper on April 11, records show.
This story was originally published April 16, 2025 at 4:37 PM with the headline "Convicted child sex offender sought assassin to kill victim’s family, FL cops say."