Some neighbors of the couple now accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill their daughters boyfriend say they were not surprised by the news.
58-year-old Jeffrey Peyton and 39-year-old Christina Peyton are charged with criminal solicitation to commit capital murder.
Wichita Falls police say they hired an undercover officer to murder their daughter’s boyfriend for $500, following a fight about money.
The Peyton’s are still in the Wichita County jail, with million dollar bonds.
Before the Peyton’s were arrested, police say they met with an undercover officer, posing as the hitman.
According to the arrest affidavit, Jeffrey Peyton said that he would give him $300 up front and another $200 when the job was done.
Those details are shocking to some of the folks in this neighborhood who knew him well, but others, not so much.
“It didn’t really surprise me when I heard about that later,” Adriana Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez says she was warned about the Peyton’s when she moved across the street about three months ago.
“We were told but we weren’t really sure if it was true or not…that he previously shot another person,” Rodriguez said.
“I’m just sick over it–that he would pull that,” Dorthy Hall said.
Hall, who didn’t want to be on camera, lives one house down from the Jeff and Christina Peyton.
She says just a week before the arrests, she says Jeff Peyton helped take her to the drug store.
Dorothy says she never met the Peytons’ daughter, or the boyfriend police say they tried to have killed.
She says Jeffrey Peyton did talk about a conflict he’d had with the boyfriend, though.
“He said, ‘well, my daughter, I’m so mad at the boyfriend that they’re going to get married I think,’ and said I’m so mad at them because she going to come into some money and he’s running around [saying] ‘Im going to come into some money, Hall said.
Dorothy thought she knew a nice, helping neighbor.
But now she thinks she was wrong.
(Information from TexomasHomepage.com)