Early morning calls to Grand Prairie police aren’t new, but one 3 a.m. call earlier this week caught veteran officers off-guard.
The caller said someone had paid him to kill a woman and her adult son in Grand Prairie. The would-be hitman had a change of heart and confessed the plans to police, investigators said.
“What he was being told to do and being paid for -- common sense kind of kicked in, and he realized, 'You know what? This is wrong,'“ Detective Lyle Gensler said.
After talking to the caller at his hotel room, officers coordinated with U.S. marshals and arrested 48-year-old Robert Gonzalez in Galveston.
Investigators said Gonzalez was the mastermind behind the murder-for-hire scheme.
Gensler told NBC 5 that Gonzalez may have wanted to collect on a life insurance policy for the man and woman.
Officers wouldn’t say how the woman and her adult son knew Gonzalez.
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Police said Gonzalez is a Grand Prairie resident. Online records show his last known address is in Grand Prairie and that he works for a roofing company in the city.
Gonzalez, who is charged with criminal solicitation to commit capital murder, is being held in the Grand Prairie jail on a $1 million bond.
Gensler said the hired gunman who called them did the right thing.
“We all have a little bit of good in us, and it sounds like the good came out in this guy, and he did the right thing by contacting us,” he said.
Officers aren’t releasing the names of the targets or the caller to protect their identities.
