An aunt and niece have been caught up in a bizarre circular murder plot involving Facebook, false identities and a family dog.
Alabama local news reports that 19-year-old Marissa Williams fell out with her aunt after moving into her home in April.
One of the causes of their fall-out was apparently the ubiquitous social network. According to the reports, Williams regularly met strangers on Facebook and invited them over to her house - which naturally annoyed her aunt.
Which is where this story gets weird. Police said that Williams' aunt's response was to create a fictional man on the site named Tre 'Topdog' Ellis, and befriend her niece with chats so she could see what she was up to on the site.
But the plan quickly backfired, in a pretty spectacular manner. Court documents allege that Williams told the fictional man that she wanted to leave Alabama, and then asked him to kidnap her and shoot her aunt if she tried to stop him.
From there the plans apparently got more elaborate and nasty. She told 'Ellis' how to get into her aunt's bedroom in order to kill her and her fiancé, and then how to shoot her cousin and the family dog when leaving the house.
On reading this, the aunt called the police and Williams -- who has admitted the plot -- was confronted with the messages. She apologised and was then arrested, where she remains in county jail on a charge of solicitation of murder and $30,000 bail.