Murder-For-Hire Suspect Ordered To Stand Trial

Despite insistence by Diane Huber’s attorney that she was entrapped, a judge on Wednesday ordered the Pinehurst, Idaho, woman to stand trial in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.

Magistrate Robert Burton found there was “substantial evidence” that Huber, 41, paid an undercover police officer to kill the mother of her granddaughter. Burton then ordered Huber held in the Kootenai County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Harvey Richman, Huber’s attorney, argued during a two-day preliminary hearing that state Criminal Investigations Bureau agents “cajoled and stampeded” the mother of three into hiring the officer, who posed as a hit man.

Richman argued that officers coached Robert Lane of Pinehurst, who went to officers after Huber allegedly asked him to help her hire a hit man, to pressure her into a crime she would not have committed.

“If she had (solicited murder) at one time, she abandoned it,” Richman said.

Lane and two CIB agents testified Tuesday that Huber willingly participated in planning Tobi Beacham-Place’s murder. Huber wanted the hit man to make Beacham-Place’s death look like a drug overdose so she could take custody of her granddaughter, the officers said.

A videotape and two audiotapes introduced as evidence Tuesday show Huber actively participated in the scheme, Deputy Prosecutor Joel Hazel said.

“She is on the videotape soliciting a murder,” Hazel said Wednesday.

The alleged plot against Beacham-Place of San Diego was not carried out.

, DataTimes