Sex Offender Hired Gunman To Kill 12-Year-Old Girl After Luring Minor Into Sexual Contact

A registered sex offender has been accused of luring a minor girl to engage in sexual activity with him and later proceeding to hire a gunman to have her killed in Rhode Island.

Twenty-eight-year-old Chandler John Cardente, of Rhode Island, has been charged with enticing a minor, committing a felony involving a minor as a registered sex offender, and interstate murder-for-hire by a federal grand jury on Sept. 14.

Cardente allegedly lured the unnamed 12-year-old victim online to engage in sexual activity with him. A short time later, he reportedly enlisted a gunman for US$200 in cash to have the underage girl killed to prevent her from testifying against him, Law & Crime reported.

Cardente, who falsely posed as a 17-year-old online, repeatedly started communicating with the minor female victim via social media on Dec. 3, 2021. A week later, on Dec. 10, 2021, Cardente allegedly picked the victim up from her school in Burrillville and engaged in some kind of sexual contact with her. Four hours after being picked up by Cardente, the minor victim was discovered on the side of Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick.

Cardente was subsequently arrested and detained at one of the Department of Corrections Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI). Later, in February 2022, while still in detention at the ACI, Cardente allegedly attempted to plot a murder-for-hire scheme to eliminate the minor victim as a witness, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Cardente allegedly communicated by telephone with another person and offered US$200 in cash and equipment worth US$1,500 to murder the minor victim. However, the person Cardente spoke with on the telephone was actually an undercover detective with the Rhode Island State Police.

“I got a 12-year-old witness, and she needs to end up dead – you’re OK with that?” he reportedly said to the undercover detective.

According to the Rhode Island Sexual Offense Registry, Cardente has a history of sexual offense-related violations dating back nearly a decade. Cardente was convicted in July 2014 on one count of first-degree child molestation and one count of third-degree sexual assault.

In addition to these, he was later also convicted of sex offender registration violations in February and June of 2019, as well as in September and November of 2020.