First, kill a bear.

A fortnight ago, Clyde Gardner was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for plotting to kill his ex-girlfriend after a friend he asked to do the job ratted him out to the police instead. The plan involved faking a car accident. So far, so trivial.

But the great part of the story how Gardner originally planned to do it. To put the blame…spectacularly….on a bear.

Take it away, Assistant DA Elizabeth Crawford:

The original murder plot was for Gardner to hunt down a bear on the [acquaintance’s] property, then skin it to take off its four claws and its pelt.

The hired killer was to put the pelt on like a suit and wear the paws like boots and gloves, then maul the woman to death to make it look like an animal had killed her.

“[Gardner had] been watching her from the woods, so he knew exactly when she would take her garbage out, so it was supposed to look like she got mauled by a bear,” Crawford said.

“The claws were to be worn as boots and on his hands so there would be only bear tracks, no human tracks.”

The one problem with this otherwise foolproof plan…the hit man “said he only had three acres to hunt on, and no bears.”

Damn, no bear disguise. So Gardner came up with the car crash idea. He told the other man how to make it look like an accident, something in which Gardner claimed special skill because he is “an experienced demolition derby driver.“

Coupled with the fact that he owns a junkyard and has a history of abusive and violent behaviour, we can see why this relationship wasn’t going to last.

It took until the second plan was hatched (unsurprisingly) for the friend to realise Gardner was serious and to go to the police. They fitted him with a wire to record Gardner talking about the murder plot.

Gardner eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy. He asked for leniency claiming that he had been drunk at the time and had intended to call everything off once he had sobered up. And would you believe it….he had actually been arrested while on his way to the hit man’s house to cancel the job? No, and the judge didn’t either.

“There is absolutely no proof” of that story, said the judge, calling the grand-jury testimony “chilling.”

Which it probably was, except for the hilarious bit with bears in it.