Davenport man gets 10 years in murder-for-hire case

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A Davenport man has been imprisoned for trying to hire someone to kill his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Scott County District Court records say 43-year-old John Cooper was sentenced Thursday to 10 years. He’d changed his plea to guilty to solicitation to commit murder.

Authorities say Cooper had violated terms of a drug crime probation and been ordered in September last year to complete probation programming at the Residential Correctional Facility in Davenport. The court records say a cellphone confiscated from him there in November contained a message asking a former resident at the facility to kill another former resident who was in a relationship with Cooper’s ex-wife.