Texas Woman Tricks High School Sweetheart into Murdering Her Husband for Her

It looked like an early morning ambush and robbery gone horribly wrong — but it wasn't the case at all.

Police in the Dallas, Texas suburb of Oak Cliff began receiving 911 calls from shocked neighbors around 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2020, reporting their neighbor had been shot.

“You got neighbors coming out,” Eric Barnes, Dallas police detective, said on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “Dogs are barking. There’s all this chaos going on.”

Police arrived in the neighborhood to find a hysterically crying woman with duct tape around her arms and hands, and her husband — his wedding band ripped off his finger — shot dead in the street, all while the couple was walking their dog just a few steps from their front door.

 “The neighbors were all in a panic and terrified because it seemed like this masked gunman had come and committed this random murder in their neighborhood,” assistant prosecutor Caitlin Paver said on Snapped.

But it wasn’t all what it seemed. As police took a closer look into Jamie and Jennifer Faith’s marriage, they discovered a wife rekindling a relationship with her high school boyfriend, and lying to him about physical and sexual abuse — all to get him to kill her husband so she could get his life insurance and money.

Jennifer and Jamie Faith were set up on a blind date by mutual friends in 2005. After being together for seven years, they eloped on a vacation to Las Vegas in 2012. They then relocated from Phoenix, Arizona to Dallas, Texas for Jamie’s job in 2017 after he received a promotion as a supervisor for American Airlines.

Jennifer Faith and Darrin Lopez. Photo: Oxygen

The couple had been in the Lone Star State for just three years when Jamie was violently murdered in his own neighborhood. An autopsy report showed Jamie was shot three times in the head, three times in the chest, and one time in the groin.

A neighbor had gotten a photograph of the gunman fleeing in a black Nissan Titan truck with a white “T” decal on its back window. Jennifer told officers the man who attacked them had on a blue mask but couldn’t provide any other information to help identify the suspect.

She agreed to let police get data from her cell phone. That’s when they discovered a text from her to a friend in April 2020 saying that she was having a “full-blown emotional affair and Jamie knows it.” She went on to identify the other man as a guy she knew from high school and had recently reconnected with named Darrin.

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“I was shocked,” Christopher Walton, Dallas police detective, said on Snapped. “Jennifer had already explained to me that their relationship was good. That there was no one else. And nowhere did she ever mention Darrin’s name.”

As police looked into Darrin Lopez, they discovered he was Jennifer’s high school boyfriend, and the two even went to prom together. After graduation, Lopez served in the special forces of the U.S. Army as a Green Beret, serving six combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, and was discharged after receiving a traumatic brain injury after a roadside bombing.

Years later, Lopez had reached out to Jennifer on LinkedIn, and they began communicating via email.

Dallas police reached out to the ATF in Tennessee to help them get aerial surveillance of Lopez’s property in that state.

“In the aerial surveillance, we found a black Nissan Titan pickup truck, and we could see the ‘T’ sticker on the black rear glass,” said Andrew Cheramie, ATF Supervisory Special Agent, on Snapped. “We now know that that is in fact Darrin Lopez’s vehicle, and that is the same vehicle that is depicted leaving the scene of the homicide here in Dallas.”

Police also got a search warrant for Lopez’s phone records.

“It does show the number of messages that they were sending back and forth,” Paver said. “It was an overwhelming amount of communication between the two of them. They were going back and forth, I think, on average, 500 times a day. What was obtained from Darrin Lopez’s phone did not exist on Jennifer Faith’s phone, so it clearly suggested that she had deleted certain things.”

Using his phone GPS, police were also able to determine that Lopez left Tennessee on October 8, and drove straight to Dallas, before heading back to Tennessee on October 9 — putting him in the area of the murder when it happened.

By the time police put Lopez under surveillance, he’d removed the “T” decal from his truck. But on Jan. 11, 2021, he was taken into custody. A backpack was found with two credit cards in Jennifer Faith’s name. That backpack also contained a blue mask, which matched the description Jennifer gave officers of the mask worn by the murder suspect.

A weapon in his home matched the ballistics of the bullet casings found at the murder scene, and a smear of blood on that gun was a DNA match for Jamie Faith.

Police took a closer look at the messages on Lopez’s phone, and discovered that within a few days of first rekindling their relationship, Jennifer and Lopez were creating a five-year plan together.

“Importantly, first day, he was saying, ‘I love you,’” Dr. John Fabian, forensic neuropsychologist, said on Snapped. “She responded wanting to rekindle a relationship. His world had been Special Ops. Green Berets. Now, it was Jennifer.”

Lopez’s text messages additionally revealed that Jennifer was involved in helping to cover up the murder. One text from Jennifer to Lopez read, “Something is eating away at me telling me. You need to take the sticker out of the back window of the truck … I have a bad feeling and I really think you need to get that sticker off ASAP … like today.”

The messages showed Jennifer was the one pulling all the strings.

“Jennifer was giving direction, and Darrin was following orders, just like he did in the military,” Barnes said. “And Jennifer was the one taking charge, taking control of the situation.”

As police discovered a life insurance policy in Jamie Faith’s name for $600,000, which was a financial motive for Jennifer, they noticed she was spending money on two credit cards and letting Lopez use them, in addition to buying gifts for him — all using the nearly $60,000 GoFundMe account neighbors had started for Jamie’s murder.

But police also found that she was manipulating and lying to Darrin Lopez in order to get him to murder her husband. She created fake email accounts, and pretending to be her husband, communicated with Lopez.

"It is generally ‘Jamie Faith’ saying to leave his wife alone, to stay out of their relationship,” said Brandi Mitchell, prosecutor, on Snapped. “And then it turns to become that he is abusing Jennifer Faith. And it turns to that he is sexually abusing her. It turns to he is gang raping her. And it gets more and more violent as these emails go through.”

Police said Jennifer even used injury photos from a car wreck she was in eight years earlier as “photo proof” of her husband’s abuse.

“So it began to paint a picture of truly an evil person, who was playing on Mr. Lopez’s heartstrings,” Cheramie said. “I think it’s fair to say he was shocked. He truly believed she was a victim of this physical and of this sexual abuse.”

Darrin Lopez confessed to murdering Jamie Faith and taking his wedding band to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. He was found guilty during trial and sentenced to 62 years in prison. He appealed the conviction in September 2023, but if the conviction is upheld, he’ll be eligible for parole in 2051.

Jennifer Faith was charged with obstruction, tampering with evidence, and murder for hire. Facing the death penalty, she took a plea deal, and on June 21, 2022, she was sentenced to life in prison.

She was also fined $250,000, and had to pay back the money from Jamie’s GoFundMe account to her neighbors.

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped on Oxygen on Sundays at 6/5c or the next day on Peacock.