Adrian Hedden
El Rito Media
achedden@currentargus.com

Jon Green was incarcerated at the Eddy County Detention Center in January 2023 when police say he conspired with and paid another inmate to kill his wife.

The murder plot never came to fruition but Green will go on trial Monday, March 3, about a year and a half after he was charged with a single count of solicitation to commit murder for paying Greg Markham to kill Kim Lark of Carlsbad via a fentanyl overdose.

Markham was arrested Sept. 12, 2023, on the same charge but the case was dismissed by the prosecution. Markham told police that once he was out of jail he decided not to go through with the plot.

Jury selection in Green’s trial is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 28, in District Judge David Finger’s courtroom at the Eddy County Courthouse in Carlsbad with opening arguments expected to begin Monday.

The events leading up to the alleged murder-for-hire plot involve a complex web of fraud, forgery and thefts for which Green was convicted and serving time in prison when he allegedly tried to arrange the hit on Lark, who filed for divorce from Green in April 2022. The divorce was pending in Eddy County District Court as of press time.

What follows is a compressed version of Green’s alleged actions that led to the solicitation charge, according to arrest affidavits and court records.

Kill wife or ‘lose everything’

Green, 66, was convicted in two cases on Sept. 8, 2023 – one for larceny valued at more than $20,000 and another on two counts of felony forgery and a single charge of conspiracy to commit a felony.

He signed plea deals in both cases and other charges of burglary, theft and fraud were dismissed. Green agreed to a sentence of three years for the larceny charge.

In the other case, he agreed to three years each for the two forgery charges and the charge of attempt to commit a felony. Those sentences were ordered to run concurrently for a total of three more years of incarceration at the Eddy County Detention Center.

After being arrested on June 13, 2022, Green was being held in pretrial detention when he allegedly approached cellmate Greg Markham on Jan. 9, 2023, and hatched the plot to have Lark killed.

Green agreed to pay $2,500 to bail out Markham, who was incarcerated for a parole violation, if he would kill Lark by forcing her to ingest and overdose on fentanyl, police said.

Investigators were made aware of the plan by Lark in March 2023 after she received a letter from another inmate, Ryan Gonzalez, who was incarcerated at the time at the Taylor County Detention Center in Abilene, Texas, but had previously shared a cell with Green and Markham in Eddy County.

The plan, according to Gonzalez, was for Green to bond Markham out of jail so he could pick up a camper Green had purchased, kill Lark and steal money they believed she had hidden in her house in Carlsbad.

Gonzalez told Lark he had served time with Green and Markham for two months before being transferred to Taylor County and offered information on the plot if she would help him pay off a $40,000 bond.

Instead, Lark contacted local police in Carlsbad and on March 27, 2023, met with detectives from the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office and federal officers with the Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives Task Force to tell them about the letter.

Police then traveled to Taylor County to interview Gonzalez who said Green had offered up to $60,000 for someone to kill his wife, had approached several other inmates at the Eddy County Detention Center, and had said he had a $750,000 life insurance policy on Lark that he could cash out when she was dead.

Gonzalez told police he heard Green and Markham discussing the plot to kill Lark and that Green said if he “did not kill her, he would lose everything.” Gonzalez said Green and Markham created a code phrase to use when the murder was completed: “walked the dogs.”

Green was charged in September 2023 with solicitation to commit murder.

Stolen dogs, forged checks and a fire in Monaco

During their interview with Lark in March 2023, police said, she continuously referred to Green as “Ted.” Investigators later found out Green was formerly named Theodore Maher until he changed it officially following an incident in Monaco. Police said Green was convicted of setting a fire that killed two people and served several years in prison.

That situation arose in 1999 when billionaire banker Edmond Safra died in the fire at a hospital along with nurse Vivienne Torrente, according to a 2007 article in the New York Post. Green, working as a nurse at the time, was initially blamed for the fire and served eight years in prison but was released after the fire was deemed an accident.

After leaving prison, Green lived in Carlsbad and married Lark on Valentine’s Day in 2020. She filed for divorce on April 25, 2022, stating in the petition to dissolve the marriage that “there is no reasonable likelihood of reconciliation.”

Lark told police Green began stealing money from her shortly after they were wed. She said Green broke into her home and stole $50,000 from her father as well as a checkbook Green used to write checks forged with Lark’s name.

An employee at Carlsbad National Bank called police in April 2022 when Green attempted to cash a forged check for $9,000 and a fraudulent cashier’s check for $44,000, according to a criminal complaint.

The phony checks led to Green’s forgery charges. The larceny charges stemmed from another incident where he was accused of stealing Lark’s three trained search and rescue cadaver dogs.

Lark, a trained dog search specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the dogs were valued at $70,000 each.

The theft of the dogs occurred in May 2022 when Green stole Lark’s 2015 Ford Expedition with the dogs inside, drove to Bexar County in Texas and was arrested days later when he entered a local hospital for an appointment.

Who’s on the witness list?

Lark, Gonzalez and Markham were all listed as potential witnesses in the case, along with Eddy County Detention Center Warden Billy Massingill and detectives with the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office.