Fred Auston Wortman III
Special agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation have arrested a Collierville attorney accused of trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife.
At the request of 25th District Attorney General Mike Dunavant, TBI special agents began investigating Fred Auston Wortman III on Thursday. Several days earlier, a concerned citizen contacted law enforcement and reported that Wortman contacted him to find someone to kill his estranged wife.
On Friday, Wortman met with a TBI agent, who posed as a potential hitman, and supplied him personal information about his wife and a down payment for the murder.
TBI agents, with the assistance of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, arrested the 39-year-old Collierville man and charged him with one count of solicitation of first-degree murder.
Wortman was being held in the Fayette County Jail on $15 million bond.