Milton Keynes Sports Direct: Whitney Franks denies soliciting murder

Whitney Franks, of Two Mile Ash, Milton Keynes, said she made two requests to kill Rutt Ruttna, a colleague of her lover James Prest, simply because she was ‘intrigued’ by the ‘bizarre’ prospect of paying for a murder on the dark web.

The 26-year-old met Prest at Sports Direct in 2014 and got into a romantic relationship with the Midsummer Place store’s assistant manager in 2015.

But after Franks left the sports shop in 2017, Prest formed a simultaneous relationship with Ruttna.

This led to Franks becoming ‘upset’ about Prest’s romance with another woman and over the next two years the defendant saved Ruttna’s name as ‘c***’ in her phone and fabricated a conversation with her about his poor sexual performance which she later showed him.

On day one of the defendant’s trial on July 18, Reading Crown Court heard how Franks submitted requests on the dark web for the murder of Ruttna as she had ‘caused a lot of problems for myself and others.’

READ THE FULL STORY FROM DAY ONE

Day three (July 20) of the trial saw Franks give evidence from the witness box.

She faced questions from her defence barrister James McCrindell, prosecutor Andrew Copeland and His Honour Judge Dugdale about the four days in which she is accused of soliciting the murder of Ruttna.

August 17, 2020

On this date, Franks met Prest during his lunch break at Sports Direct and asked him if he was ‘sneaking around’ to see Rutt Ruttna.

‘I had suspicions he might have been seeing Rutt.

‘We never lived together but we spoke all the time and communicated all the time. But then he would go quiet over some evenings.’

The defendant denied she had followed Prest to Ruttna’s address, instead claiming she learned of Ruttna’s address through a taxi booking Prest had made on her Uber account.

August 18, 2020

Franks said she was feeling ‘low’ during this period of time but ‘opened up’ to Prest in a ‘positive’ email on August 18, 2020, saying she found a ‘few things’ that could help her anxiety.

The defendant said those things included finding YouTube videos of people discussing their mental health and getting out of the house.

When asked if any of those ‘things’ involved harming anyone, Franks replied: ‘Not at all.’

On the same day, Franks accessed the dark web for the first time. She explained how she came to know about the hidden part of the internet.

During the pandemic, Franks said she ‘had a lot of time’ on her hands and would watch true crime documentaries about the dark web.

Franks said the dark web ‘intrigued her’ as it seemed ‘bizarre’.

She said she found an article which had a ‘step-by-step’ guide about how to access it, but was still ‘baffled’ by it as she ‘did not believe it was a real thing.’

The first website she accessed on the dark web was the site where she made a murder submission about Ruttna.

It also included a number of services such as drugs for sale, weapons for sale and murder.

‘I was convinced it was a scam and it wasn’t real’, Franks said when asked about why she sent her submission to murder Ruttna.

August 19, 2020

As she did not receive a response to her first request, she said she included the social media pages in an attempt to elicit a response in a second submission on August 19.

In her message, Franks said she was ‘very serious about this.’

Mr McCrindell asked her if she was ‘serious’ about the request but the defendant said ‘not at all.’

When quizzed about why she sent £282 in Bitcoin to the service, Franks said the site’s owners needed ‘proof of funds.’

She said a scammer would ‘take the money, and this would confirm they were scammers.’

Mr McCrindell read out more of the message in court. Franks wrote: ‘I don’t want to get caught.

‘I’m not trying to waste anybody’s time.

‘I need this job completed so badly.’

The defendant said she sent this message to ‘confirm it was a scam.’

Reading Crown Court heard how Franks created fake usernames for her requests, which included Ruttna’s address and Facebook and Twitter pages.

HHJ Dugdale put it to Franks that she risked the murder of Ruttna by providing her address on the second request.

Franks responded by saying this was not the case because she ‘knew it was a scam all along.’

Questioned by Mr Copeland as to why she paid to hire a hitman to murder Ruttna, Franks said: ‘It was out of curiosity and intrigue, I had a lot of time on my hands.’

‘I was intrigued by the whole thing, it wasn’t normal. It was all so bizarre.’

‘What’s not normal is to make two submissions to have someone murdered’, Mr Copeland responded.

The prosecutor questioned Franks as to why she did not try to buy drugs - another service offered on the dark web site - instead of requesting murder.

‘There was no reason, I was just intrigued’, Franks responded.

‘You could have asked for wraps of cocaine - that would be a lot less than £282.57, wouldn’t it?’, Mr Copeland asked.

Franks said buying drugs was ‘not an honourable thing’ and it was a more ‘common’ activity.

Mr Copeland concluded: ‘This wasn’t a moment of foolishness, patheticness or sadness, this was true wickedness over four continuous days.

‘You spent a third of the money you had to seek murder.’

‘That’s not true’, Franks said.

HHJ Dugdale asked Franks why she put Ruttna’s name down for murder.

‘I don’t know exactly, there was never any intention for anybody to get hurt.’

August 20 and 21, 2022

Franks then sent more messages to the website trying to recover the money ‘even though I knew it was a scam’, she said.

She signed off one of these messages as ‘Whitney’.

‘I really need it back as I am struggling for money right now’, Franks wrote in one message.

The jury heard that she was not in fact struggling for money, but tried to use this as leverage to recover the funds.

September 2020

After Franks’ actions were uncovered by an investigative journalist on September 1, 2020 police asked Ruttna if she might have any idea as to who put the hit on her.

Ruttna posed it may have been Franks and the defendant was arrested on September 10, 2020.

She was charged almost a year later in August 2021.

Franks denies one count of murder and the trial continues at Reading Crown Court.