Wednesday Weirdness: Trying to Off Husband to Get Life Insurance to Shack Up with Adopted Son

Welcome to Wednesday Weirdness, a recurring theme where we post something truly weird and wacky in adoption or child welfare.

What happens in Vegas…

“A woman has been arrested for allegedly orchestrating a plot to kill her husband in a drive-by shooting after she started a romantic relationship with their 21-year-old adopted son.

Amy Bessey, 42, allegedly enlisted the help of her son, Michael Bessey, and her brother, Richard Pearson, 39, to shoot her husband as he drove on Interstate 15 near Las Vegas, Nevada on November 14.

Robert Bessey, who was going through a divorce with his wife, was struck by a bullet in the neck around 4.30am after a gunman fired a shot from a gold SUV driving alongside him.

But he survived and identified the SUV as belonging to Richard Pearson’s girlfriend.

Michael Bessey and Pearson were charged in the murder plot last year, but police only implicated Amy Bessey last week when her son told his cellmate that she had been involved.

She was arrested by Las Vegas police on Friday on charges of attempted murder, battery and conspiracy to commit murder against her husband, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

She was apparently motivated by a a $250,000 insurance policy on Robert Bessey’s life, which was due to expire after their divorce was finalized.

Police said the unusual relationship between Amy Bessey and her son also appeared to be a motive.

Robert Bessey told detectives that his wife and son’s ‘close’ relationship had prompted the divorce, while Michael Bessey’s ex-girlfriend said Amy was also the reason they had broken up.

Relatives claimed the pair had an ‘unnatural relationship’ and one friend said they would go to nightclubs together and ‘grab each other’s buttocks’, police said.

Robert Bessey also told police that he had read a letter his son had written to his wife from jail which said: ‘I miss touching you’.

The man added that his wife and son both had made various statements wishing he were dead.

But Amy Bessey was only implicated in the gruesome plot when her son’s cellmate, Tremel Palmer, claimed he told him that the three planned the killing and were shocked Mr Bessey survived

Michael Bessey allegedly told Palmer that he was the one who had fired the bullet. He and Pearson then went to a diner for Amy Bessey to collect them, he allegedly said.

Michael Bessey added that he expected to receive a total of $400,000 from the death, with which he would buy a truck, while his mother would pay off her mortgage, police said.

Bessey said that he wanted his father dead as he had physically abused his mother and mentally abused the family, the Journal-Review reported.

He added that he planned to blame the plot on his uncle, Richard Pearson, who recently finished a prison sentence, by claiming the man had forced him to get involved at gunpoint

In an eerie twist following the shooting, Amy Pearson cooperated with police and handed over her brother and her son to police by identifying them in a video taken at a gas station near the scene.

After her son was arrested in November, she told the Review-Journal: ‘I have no idea what’s going on. I wish I did’.

Michael Bessey, Richard Pearson and Amy Pearson have all been charged with attempted murder with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit murder and battery with a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm. Richard Pearson was also charged with violation of parole.

Amy Bessey will appear in Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday.”
Woman, 42, ‘plotted to kill husband in drive-by shooting after starting a romantic relationship with their adopted son, 21’

[Daily Mail 1/8/13 by Lydia Warren]