Allison Salinas: Murder-for-Hire Plot, Guilty Plea, and Appeal

Allison Salinas, a 48-year-old woman from Pekin, Illinois, pleaded guilty in August 2025 to felony solicitation of murder for hire and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for trying to arrange her husband Patrick’s killing. The case drew national attention months later when Dateline NBC connected her to a previous husband already serving a life sentence for murdering his wife in a 2003 house fire.

What She Asked For

Court records show Salinas began discussing plans to kill her husband around November or December 2023 with James Turrentine, a Dallas, Texas man she had briefly dated in high school and reconnected with in 2021.¹ Those conversations continued into at least May 2024. Prosecutors said she was motivated by a desire to avoid splitting marital assets in a divorce and to pursue her relationship with Turrentine.²

Across two recorded phone calls totaling roughly 100 minutes, Salinas and Turrentine discussed several methods: hiring a hitman to lure Patrick into a wooded area and shoot him with a silenced weapon, staging a fatal car accident, and slipping shellfish into his food to trigger an allergic reaction. Salinas dismissed the food idea because Patrick could still call for help. She wanted the killing carried out while she was at work so she would have an alibi, saying she would need to play the “grieving widow.”³ Turrentine suggested “some old friends of his dad could do it.”¹

On May 27, 2024, Salinas sent Turrentine a photograph of Patrick with the message “There’s ur pic u need,” followed by: “Can’t talk, don’t text back but please with everything I mean to you… Just take care of this.” A friend, Ashley Allen, told police she had overheard Salinas discussing finding a “ghost,” slang for a hitman, to kill Patrick.¹

How the Plot Was Uncovered

Turrentine first contacted Pekin Police in February 2024, reporting that Salinas was trying to manipulate him into killing Patrick.¹ He said he had tried to talk her out of it, then began recording their calls when he could not. The investigation moved slowly. By July 2025 Turrentine was frustrated enough to take the case public, posting an 11-minute video to Facebook on July 9 that combined recordings of his conversations with Salinas and an AI-augmented voice-over describing the plot.³

Pekin police contacted him within 36 hours. The department formally opened its investigation on July 8, 2025, and multiple law enforcement agencies joined.⁴

Arrest, Guilty Plea, and Sentence

Salinas was arrested on July 22, 2025, just after 5 p.m. and booked into the Tazewell County Jail.⁵ In a police interview that day, she acknowledged discussing her husband’s murder with Turrentine over an extended period and admitted there was nothing to suggest she was not serious.¹

At a pretrial hearing on July 25, 2025, Judge Chris Doscotch reviewed the recorded calls and text messages. He called Salinas “conniving and manipulative” but said he considered her a threat to her husband rather than the broader community, and released her on GPS-monitored home confinement with a no-contact order.² Patrick told the judge he “felt safe” if she were released.⁶

On August 1, 2025, less than two weeks after her arrest, Salinas pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of murder, a Class X felony under Illinois law. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison plus three years of mandatory supervised release.⁶² The offense carries a statutory range of 15 to 30 years, so the sentence sits near the minimum.⁷

Patrick Salinas’s Response

The intended victim has taken an unusually sympathetic stance toward his wife. At the July 2025 hearing, Patrick described the situation as involving “mental health issues on both sides” and said the case “is not what it seems to be.”² He later appeared on Dateline NBC to defend her, saying he believes Turrentine manipulated her.³

The marriage had been troubled for some time. The couple filed for divorce three separate times without finalizing any of the filings, and Salinas obtained several orders of protection against Patrick, including three in the month before her arrest.²

The Earlier Marriage to Delbert Mills

Before marrying Patrick, Salinas had been married to Delbert Mills of Goliad, Texas, who was convicted in 2013 of first-degree murder for setting a 2003 house fire that killed his wife, Patricia Leigh Mills. Salinas married Delbert six weeks after Patricia’s death, a timeline that alarmed Patricia’s family, the Burdettes, who suspected Salinas had been involved in planning the fire.⁸

Before Delbert’s trial, Salinas confessed to a Goliad County sheriff’s detective that Delbert had committed the crime and had threatened her with “the same fate.” She later retracted that confession, which the Victoria Advocate described as a “roadblock” for the prosecution.⁸ She was never charged in connection with Patricia’s death. In her Dateline interview, she denied any involvement, called Delbert “probably the worst human being I’ve ever met,” and said the marriage was “one of her worst mistakes.” She rejected any similarity between that case and her own conviction.³ Delbert Mills is serving a life sentence and has maintained his innocence.

Salinas’s background before the Pekin case also included a brief 2021 run for U.S. Senate as a Republican against incumbent Tammy Duckworth; her name never appeared on the primary ballot.⁹ The Dateline episode also aired allegations from Kate Elliott and others that Salinas had run fraudulent fundraisers and failed to pay workers at a bakery she operated; Salinas denied the accusations and called Elliott an “internet troll.”³

Appeal and Current Status

On January 16, 2026, Salinas filed a motion for post-conviction relief from Logan Correctional Facility, asking to vacate Judge Doscotch’s decision. She claimed her attorneys from the Tazewell County Public Defender’s Office were ineffective, arguing they failed to call a psychiatrist to testify about a “severe” history of mental health issues and failed to provide “vital information” supporting her claims of innocence.¹⁰ In her Dateline interview she also said her guilty plea had been coerced by the threat of a 30-year sentence.³

She also filed a motion requesting exemption from appeal-related fees, citing an inability to pay while incarcerated. As of February 2026, no hearing date had been set on either motion, and Salinas remained at Logan Correctional Facility in Lincoln, Illinois, serving her 16-year sentence.¹⁰

1
WMBD Radio. Murder-for-Hire Plot Allegedly Orchestrated by Pekin Woman Detailed in Court Documents
2
25 News Now. Woman Accused of Soliciting Husband’s Murder Takes Plea Deal, Will Spend Over a Decade in Prison
3
Peoria Journal Star. Allison Salinas of Pekin Says She Never Wanted To Hurt Husband, Dateline Episode
4
25 News Now. Pekin Police Arrest Woman After Learning of Murder-for-Hire Plot
5
Kansas City Star. Pekin Woman Accused of Solicitation of Murder
6
WCBU. Guilty Plea Earns Pekin Woman 16-Year Sentence for Trying To Have Her Husband Killed
7
FindLaw. Illinois Statutes Chapter 720 Criminal Offenses § 5/8-1
8
Victoria Advocate. New Dateline Episode Recounts 2003 Goliad Murder
9
NBC Chicago. One-Time U.S. Senate Candidate Charged With Solicitation of Murder
10
25 News Now. Pekin Woman Who Asked Ex-Boyfriend To Kill Husband Appealing Sentence