LAKE COUNTY, FL (WKMG/CNN) - A man facing child porn charges is now accused of a murder-for-hire plot to kill the judge overseeing his case.
"As far as the weird scale goes, it's off the charts, totally," said Lt. John Herrell of Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Herrell says "the weirdness" started when Lake County investigators monitored jailhouse phone calls made by Robert Anthony O'Hare on Jan. 7.
O'Hare was in jail accused of possessing child porn and hiding small cameras in juke boxes to record children without them knowing.
"During a phone conversation with his mother, he passed along a set of numbers that ended up being a secret code that they would use to send messages back and forth," Herrell said.
Herrell said his investigators had been breaking O'Hare's changing codes in phone calls for more than a year.
This time, he said O'Hare was heard reciting the code to his mother, a set of numbers that investigators said spelled out two words backwards.
"When that code was deciphered, it stated 'kill Briggs.' Well, Judge Briggs happens to be the judge that is presiding over his previous charges of his," Herrell said.
Investigators said O'Hare's mother Virginia is heard on the phone saying she would give the code to a man called "the rabbi."
The report indicates she later said "the rabbi" can't do it.
O'Hare's 80-year-old mother could possibly face charges with her son.
"I can tell you that detectives are looking at her, and they're continuing to investigate this," Herrell said.
If convicted of solicitation to commit murder, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Copyright 2018 WKMG via CNN. All rights reserved.
