Their relationship grew bumpy: Between late 2017 and early 2018, court filings show, the two sought protective orders against each other. In 2017, Ms. Cincinelli was disciplined by the Police Department for sharing confidential information with Mr. DiRubba.
At the same time, Ms. Cincinelli was embroiled in protracted divorce proceedings with her estranged husband, Isaiah Carvalho, Jr., a relationship that itself had been tumultuous: Both parties had restraining orders against the other. In early 2019, she became fixated on Mr. Carvalho’s possible claim to her pension, according to Mr. DiRubba and prosecutors’ filings.
Ms. Cincinelli also grew resentful of Mr. DiRubba’s teenage daughter and the expensive gifts he bought her, prosecutors said. In conversations cited by prosecutors from around the time of the attempted hit, Ms. Cincinelli uses graphic language to describe Mr. DiRubba’s daughter as sexually promiscuous; she also followed the teen’s social media pages.
Prosecutors said Ms. Cincinelli asked Mr. DiRubba to hire a hit man to kill them both. In February 2019, she withdrew $7,000 from a local bank and gave it to Mr. DiRubba, who converted the money into gold coins to pay the hit man. (Ms. Cincinelli’s lawyer said the money was not for a hit man, but a loan to him.)
Rather than go through with the scheme, Mr. DiRubba contacted the F.B.I., and became a confidential source. In the months that followed, he recorded his conversations with Ms. Cincinelli as she detailed her wish to have the two murdered and detailed ways to execute the plan and avoid scrutiny from law enforcement, court filings show.
In a recorded conversation from May 2019, played in court Friday, Mr. DiRubba and Ms. Cincinelli discussed his concerns about being questioned by law enforcement after the deaths. He said: “I’m just stressing about it, ’cause it’s going to happen.” Ms. Cincinelli replied: “You say that every weekend, for the past month.”
The authorities went to lengths to make it appear that the scheme had worked, court filings show. On May 17, 2019, the Suffolk County Police Department contacted Ms. Cincinelli to say they were investigating Mr. Carvalho’s death. An F.B.I. agent, posing as the hit man, sent Mr. DiRubba a photograph of the supposed crime scene, which he showed to Ms. Cincinelli, according to court filings.