Marie Billinglsey was found guilty on charges of solicitation of murder, criminal conspiracy to commit murder and three counts of forgery second degree during a December trial. She was scheduled to be sentenced in Circuit Court Wednesday, but Judge Jack Meigs stepped aside, delaying the sentencing at least another week.

In an unexpected move, Meigs issued a statement before the sentencing hearing, recusing himself from the hearing.

“Events have occurred subsequent to the jury trial in this case which the Court finds require the undersigned to recuse from this matter,” Meigs said in the order. “To prevent prejudice to the Defendant and/or the State of Alabama, the Court declines to state in detail the circumstances that have occurred but will do so, if necessary, to prevent either side from gaining an advantage in this case.”

The Times-Journal learned Thursday the hearing has now been placed on Circuit Court Judge Tommy Jones’ docket, but details on when the sentencing hearing would be rescheduled were not available as Jones had not yet reviewed the case.

At the time of the verdict, assistant Attorney General Andrew Arrington said the case involved an incident where Billingsley secured the address and Social Security number of a Marion resident and applied for $800,000 in insurance policies in the victim’s name.

“Starting back in 2002, Billingsley started taking out insurance policies on the lady she knew from Marion, and was not related to her whatsoever,” Arrington said in December. “She somehow obtained her Social Security number and date of birth and went out and took out policies on this lady and committed fraud in that she presented herself as the lady’s mother.”

Six total applications were made, Arrington said, and three were approved.

“She would have gotten a little more than $400,000 of those policies that were actually granted,” he said. “If they had all worked out, she was looking at making close to $1 million off this lady.”

When the policies were placed side by side, Arrington said it was obvious that different people had signed the victim’s name.

Once the policies were in place, Arrington said Billingsley solicited someone to run the victim over for $30,000.

The plan, Arrington said, was to have the victim lured out of her house, hit her in the head, take her out to a remote part of Perry County, and run her over with the car.

The next step, Arrington said, was to have the car used in the crime crushed to destroy the evidence.

The Attorney General’s office became aware of the case while investigating a separate incident, Arrington said.

“Our office was doing an investigation into a missing person and stumbled into this,” he said. “We investigated and corroborated the evidence we had learned and we arrested her on that. We were able to stop her before she actually killed someone.”