Former Bovina resident sentenced

Staff and Wire Reports

A former Bovina chiropractor has been sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to hire a Clovis police detective posing as a hit man to kill her ex-husband and his father.

Shannon Elizabeth Hollister, 36, pleaded guilty last year to one count of interstate murder for hire.

Neither man was harmed.

Hollister, of Bellingham, Wash., was arrested in Mount Vernon, Wash., about 60 miles north of Seattle, in January 2005 after using Wal-Mart’s money transfer system to wire $5,000 to the Clovis police detective posing as a hit man.

During her sentencing hearing on Thursday, Hollister’s ex, Nicholas Martin, said that during their marital difficulties in 2000, Hollister took her daughters and went into hiding, living at homeless shelters.

She cut the hair of the 3-year-old daughter and pretented she was a boy, calling the girl “Brian” in public, he said.

Since her arrest the family has been able to live “without the need to look over our shoulder,” Martin said.

Hollister worked with her ex-husband and his father at a chiropractic clinic in Bovina before moving to Washington in 2004, according to a February 2005 Clovis News Journal article. Initially she sought the name of a professional hit man from an acquaintance, who jokingly said she knew one, the article said. The acquaintance called Clovis police, who asked her to give Hollister the number of the undercover detective, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said at the time of Hollister’s arrest.

Not long after, Hollister moved to Washington, but she continued to keep in touch with the undercover detective in Clovis, according to the CNJ article.

“Maybe she believed that there were just so few hit men in this country that she had to deal with somebody in New Mexico,” Burroughs said previously.

Citing confidentiality in the case, Clovis Police declined comment and referred inquiries to the FBI in Seattle. FBI spokeswoman Burroughs was not available for comment Saturday night.