commentary by Patrick H. Moore
If the rank-and-file American parent fully grasped how common teacher-student sexual relationships are, the whole country might revolt and home-school their kids. A great many of these illicit relationships involve teachers and 16 and 17 year old students. There’s just something about teachers and students in that age range…
But this story is not about this national problem which I guarantee you is not going to go away as long as the human race possesses sex hormones. This story is about an alleged bizarre plot on the part of a 31-year-old male teacher named Ethan Estevez and his 17-year-old student lover to, shall we say, “eliminate” the teacher’s wife.
Andres Jaurequi of the Huffington post writes:
Prosecutors in Maryland allege that a teacher accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a teen student plotted with the girl to murder his wife.
Ethan Estevez, 31, worked as a biology teacher at the Center for Educational Opportunity in Aberdeen, an alternative school serving at-risk youth. He was charged last June with child sex abuse after police learned of his relationship with a 17-year-old girl who attended the school, according to WBAL.
But it appears Estevez’s alleged criminal activity didn’t stop there. After relatives of the victim reported the sexual relationship to police, investigators say they unearthed a plot to murder the teacher’s wife.
Let’s stop right there for a moment. Suppose I want to murder my wife so I can carry on an unfettered dalliance with an under-aged student? (Of course, given that I’ll turn 65 next summer and will gasp start receiving Medicare, it’s somewhat unlikely that a 17-year high school student would want to “dally” with the old boy.)
But just suppose such a relationship did occur and we came to the conclusion that it was in everyone’s best interest for my long-suffering wife to get it in the neck. The burning question would then become how might we best carry out the scheme.
(Just for the record, I really do not want to murder my wife. God knows she can be aggravating, and I’m certain she would say the same about me, but these small issues hardly justify felony murder.)
What I’m getting at here in this roundabout and perhaps flippant manner is that Ethan Estevez was an absolute moron to get the 17-year-old girl involved in his lame-brain scheme to murder his wife (assuming there really was such a scheme and it’s not all just a fabrication on the part of fanciful prosecutors). If you’re going to murder your wife for any reason, you gotta do it on your own. I realize that’s a tall order, and chances are you’re not an experienced hit man, but as soon as you bring other people into the scheme, and it doesn’t matter who the other people are, you are plunging yourself into kaka so deep that chances are you will never get out, which of course is precisely what appears to be happening to Ethan Estevez.
Andres Jauregui of Huff Post reports that Estevez has been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly confirmed this fact this week. The case will now be dispatched to the grand jury.
Cassily, who seems to be a reasonable man, told CBS Baltimore:
“It’s not the kind of thing that we would charge lightly.”
According to charging documents, detectives later learned that his juvenile mistress had told classmates she could get someone to kill her (Estevez’s wife) for $600, but it had to look like an accident because of the life insurance.
The Estevez residence
What the hell? They were going to get the wife whacked for a piddling $600? Surely she’s worth more than that. Any wife is. Has life been so devalued that people are carrying out murders-for-hire for a mere $600. I certainly hope such is not the case.
But whatever the going price is (and I’m hardly an expert in this area), the fact the 17-year-old “juvenile mistress” is babbling to her classmates about their ridiculous plans strongly suggests that Estevez should not only never have gotten involved with her, but if he was moronic enough to enter into the relationship, he certainly should not have recruited her to help kill his wife.
According to the charging documents, Estevez did consider various approaches to killing her:
“At one point, it appears Estevez spoke of making it look like a hit-and-run accident, but later he allegedly explained to a potential hit man how they could arrange for her to die in a drive-by shooting outside a restaurant in Harford County, and the gunman was instructed to then shoot Estevez in the arm to make it look random.”
Oh boy, it’s the old “shoot me too but don’t kill me approach” so that it looks like I too was a victim. How many times have we seen this backfire? Have we ever seen it succeed?
So it’s hard to say who was dumber (assuming the allegations are true), the teacher or the student? Neither appear to be rocket scientist material. In fact, according to Meghan McKorkell of Baltimore.CBSLocal, the “juvenile mistress” actually wrote, perhaps in a text:
“Like it has to look like an accident because of life insurance and stuff” and they “just really need it to happen before Sunday.”
Estevez has been released on $75,000 bond. His attorney, Karen Jones stated in his defense:
“My client would deny any wrongdoing, that he never conspired with anyone to commit an offense or never solicited anyone to commit such an offense.”
Harford County schools had the good sense to terminate Estevez’s employment in January.