A man who had abused his ex-girlfriend and then plotted to kill her and make it look like she had been mauled by a bear was sentenced to prison for trying to hire someone to kill her in a staged car crash.
Clyde Gardner gave up on his first idea: Kill a bear, skin it and wear the pelt while using its claws to kill the woman as she took out her garbage. The plan included him wearing the bear’s paws on his feet so no human footprints would be left behind.
Prosecutors said the 57-year-old junkyard owner had carefully watched his ex-girlfriend’s movements, hiding in the woods with binoculars to learn her routines after she kicked him out of the house they shared in Malone, near the Canadian border.
When he abandoned the first plan, Gardner approached a friend and gave him a picture of the woman, her auto license plate number and $500 toward a $15,000 bounty to kill her in a car crash.