South Jersey man charged in murder-for-hire plot will remain jailed until trial

A Gloucester County man who authorities say conspired with his girlfriend to hire a hitman to kill her former paramour was ordered Tuesday to remain behind bars until trial.

Jeffrey Callahan, 44, of Clayton, and Heather Reynolds, 43, of Sicklerville, were charged earlier this month with conspiracy to commit murder. They have denied the charges and are being held in the Camden County jail.

Reynolds also stands accused of murder in the suffocation death of her 17-month-old son, Axel, a crime she also denies. In May 2018, prosecutors say, she killed the child by holding a cleaning wipe over his nose and mouth because she felt he was getting in the way of an affair she was having.

During the investigation into the boy’s death, detectives uncovered evidence of the murder-for-hire plot, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said last week.

At a virtual detention hearing for Callahan on Tuesday, Assistant Prosecutor Peter Gallagher said the intended victim was a man Reynolds had been dating.

Reynolds’ attitude toward the man had “soured,” Gallagher said, and by the fall of 2018, she was planning his murder. He said Reynolds enlisted Callahan, her new boyfriend, “to help her hire someone to kill” her ex.

Callahan’s attorney, Timothy Wright, said during the hearing that Callahan denies that.

Reynolds’ attorney, Richard J. Fuschino Jr., said in a phone interview that Reynolds had no role in any murder plot. “Without question, she is innocent of the crime of solicitation to commit murder,” he said.

As for the death of her son, he said, Reynolds “absolutely” did not suffocate the child.

“Without a question, after her son died, she was absolutely heartbroken,” he said.

Authorities have said that on the morning of May 10, 2018, Reynolds ran from her then-home on Marcia Court in Gloucester Township holding her unresponsive child in her arms and screaming for help from her neighbors.

Reynolds was not alone with the child on the day of his death, Fuschino said. Also in the home at the time, he said, was the man she had been dating, the alleged intended target in the murder-for-hire plot. He declined to elaborate.

In court Tuesday during the hearing in the murder-for-hire case, Gallagher, the prosecutor, said Callahan had approached a “third party” with hopes of being connected to “someone who would be able to kill” Reynolds’ ex-boyfriend, offering up to about $25,000.

Callahan also sent several Facebook messages saying the man would be “a Deadman walking” and “Mark my words he’ll be dead in a year,” authorities said.

After Reynolds was taken into custody in connection with her son’s death, Callahan told her in a phone call that he had sent “a threatening message” to the man after learning that he had spoken to law enforcement officials about that murder investigation, the prosecutor said.

Wright, the defense attorney, said Callahan, a lifelong South Jersey resident who worked as a union carpenter, had been merely “venting.”

“These are fighting words or ugly words about somebody who perhaps is a rival, but that certainly does not rise to the level of consciously making an act to hire someone to commit a murder,” he said.

Superior Court Judge Gwendolyn Blue ordered Callahan held in custody pending trial, determining that he poses a safety threat to the target of the alleged murder plot.