Texts between Dallas woman and man accused of killing her husband reveal cover-up attempt, feds say

A Dallas widow told the man accused of killing her husband to destroy evidence in the case and coached him on what to say to police, then deleted those text messages in a “calculated attempt” to interfere with the investigation into the slaying, authorities allege.

Jennifer Lynne Faith, 48, was arrested Wednesday in Dallas on a federal charge of obstruction of justice connected to the fatal shooting of 49-year-old James “Jamie” Faith.

The criminal complaint against her was unsealed by a judge Thursday, revealing text messages between her and Darrin Ruben Lopez — her college boyfriend — who authorities say drove about 650 miles from his Cumberland Furnace, Tenn., home to Dallas to commit the murder.

Lopez, 48, was arrested in Tennessee in January on a federal charge of taking a firearm across state lines to commit a felony. He has since been extradited to Texas and also faces a state charge of murder.

Faith and Lopez were in the Dallas County jail Thursday. Bail was set at $1 million for Lopez, and Faith was awaiting an initial federal court appearance set for Friday.

Attorneys for both have said it is too soon to comment on the cases against their clients.

The shooting

Jamie and Jennifer Faith were walking their dog, Maggie, the morning of Oct. 9 — the day after their 15th anniversary — when a masked man approached them just outside their home on South Waverly Drive in north Oak Cliff.

He shot Jamie Faith seven times with a .45-caliber handgun: three times in the head, three times in the chest and once in the groin. Police said he then wrapped duct tape around Jennifer Faith’s hands and hit her before fleeing.

Witnesses in the neighborhood heard shots and saw a man speed off in a black Nissan pickup, and police released an image of it the next day in hopes that someone would recognize the “T” sticker on the rear windshield.

Publicly, the case appeared to grow cold in the weeks that followed.

Jennifer Faith spoke to local television stations in early December, asking for the killer to turn himself in. “My hope is that someday perhaps the person will realize the gravity of what they’ve done and what they’ve taken from myself and my daughter,” she told KXAS-TV (NBC5).

On WFAA-TV (Channel 8), she drew attention to the distinctive sticker on the pickup. “Somebody has got to know whose truck this is,” she said.

Messages revealed

Lopez was arrested in early January after authorities pieced together a case against him using cellphone records, debit-card transactions, surveillance video, GPS data and Google history.

Authorities said then that he and Faith had been having an “emotional affair,” sending each other hundreds of text messages a day. But the substance of those messages — which ultimately helped lead to Faith’s arrest — was not made public until Thursday.

The same day Lopez was arrested, Faith met with authorities at Dallas police headquarters. She said she and Lopez communicated daily but denied that their relationship was inappropriate or intimate, the affidavit says.

In late January, authorities analyzed Lopez’s cellphone and found a number of messages he and Faith had exchanged in the preceding months that they say contradicted what Faith had told them.

Some of their conversations were sexual in nature, the affidavit says, adding that in December Faith told Lopez “I am so in love with you” and “I truly can’t be without you at this point.”

Removing the sticker

Numerous messages were about the investigation into the shooting, authorities said.

On Dec. 3 — the day after Faith spoke to WFAA and mentioned the black pickup — she texted Lopez a link to the story, the affidavit says, and asked him to remove the sticker. “Something is eating away at me telling me you need to take the sticker out of the back window of the truck,” one message read, according to the affidavit, and another said she’d feel “a ton better if you take it off and clean the window really well.”

Lopez responded that he was working on it, according to the affidavit.

Faith brought up the sticker again the next day, the affidavit says: “I know you’re going to think I am crazy, but it’s REALLY nagging at me. I have a bad feeling and I really think you need to get that sticker off ASAP … like today.”

On Dec. 6, Lopez sent Faith a message reading “Sticker done,” authorities said. “Oh YAY!!!” she replied, later adding that she felt “SOOOOO much better.”

Financial problems

Faith and Lopez also discussed the financial implications of Jamie Faith’s death, authorities said. Lopez reportedly was having money problems and had fallen behind on his mortgage.

The affidavit says Jamie Faith had a life insurance policy worth more than $600,000 and notes that a GoFundMe account set up to benefit Jennifer Faith had raised more than $60,000, all of which was withdrawn by early December.

In late December, Faith recounted a conversation she had had with a Dallas detective after the insurance company said it couldn’t pay out her late husband’s policy because police hadn’t ruled her out as a suspect, the affidavit says.

The detective told her the company must have misunderstood, according to Faith’s messages, but she wrote that he was “full of crap.”

Days later, the affidavit says, she wrote to Lopez that if she didn’t get the insurance money quickly enough, she might move in with him and tell people she was helping with his daughters in exchange for a place to live.

Factory reset

In another exchange, Faith asked Lopez whether he would vouch that her relationship with her husband had been good if authorities ever asked him about it, the affidavit says: “Just want to make sure you would never say anything that would stick out.”

On Jan. 10, after a detective called to set up a meeting with Faith the next day, she asked Lopez not to text her that day, the affidavit says. “Don’t text me Monday. I am going to factory reset my phone on Sunday night after deleting texts,” she wrote, according to authorities.

She continued, telling Lopez that — in case authorities ever looked at their phone records — they should say that they were old friends and that she was supporting him emotionally and financially while he was going through a divorce, the affidavit says: “Just so you and I have the same explanations.”

During that Jan. 11 interview, authorities said, Faith “lied and followed the script” she had discussed with Lopez regarding what she would say about their relationship and her marriage. Afterward, police downloaded the contents of her phone, and they later determined that the messages recovered from Lopez’s phone had been deleted from Faith’s phone.

The affidavit alleges that on two occasions, both before and after her husband was killed, Faith deleted text messages so authorities could not read them. The actions were “a calculated attempt to obstruct the criminal investigation into the murder of her husband,” the document says.

‘Darkest secrets’

Law enforcement officials lauded the investigation and arrest in written statements.

Prerak Shah, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said that the dedication of law-enforcement officials is why a murder suspect is in custody.

“Even as she publicly claimed she was ‘desperate for answers’ regarding her husband’s murder, Jennifer Faith was communicating with the alleged killer, actively urging him to destroy evidence and attempting to delete incriminating communications from her phone,” Shah said.

“Sometimes things just aren’t what they seem,” said Jeffrey C. Boshek II, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Dallas office. “Special agents and detectives knew Mrs. Faith was hiding something and were able to expose her darkest secrets.”

Dallas Police Chief Eddie García praised the teamwork of local and federal authorities, saying he was “pleased to see that there were no stones left unturned during the course of this investigation.”

If convicted, Faith faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Dallas police have not said whether any state charges are expected to be filed.

Lopez faces up to life behind bars on the murder charge and up to 10 years on the federal weapons charge.

Tracking down Lopez

Right after the shooting, Jennifer Faith gave a detective permission to look at the contents of her cellphone, an affidavit says.

Authorities found text messages to a friend last spring in which she talked about having marital problems and said she was having a “full-blown emotional affair” with a man she had dated in high school and college: Lopez. “He says he has a 5-year plan to get me there” to his Tennessee home, she told the friend, according to the affidavit.

In August, she told the same friend that she’d “put the brakes” on her relationship with Lopez because her husband was hurt and she “just couldn’t do it to him.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials discovered that Lopez owned a black Nissan Titan pickup. They obtained a search warrant for his cellphone records and learned that he and Jennifer Faith had been in “constant contact,” exchanging hundreds of messages a day — except for a period of about 28 hours surrounding the shooting, the affidavit says.

Debit-card transactions placed Lopez at a truck stop in West Memphis, Ark., the afternoon before the shooting, about 200 miles from his home and along the route from there to Dallas, authorities said. He bought Red Bull and DVDs and withdrew money from an ATM, according to the affidavit, but then didn’t use his debit card again until late Oct. 9, back near his home.

Officials also said that a motion-activated camera at the Faiths’ home recorded images of a man in the backyard next door in the hours before the shooting, and that GPS data from Lopez’s phone placed him nearby at that time.

Lopez’s Google account showed that he had searched for directions from his home to the Faiths’ house on Oct. 8, according to the affidavit, and that on the night of the shooting he searched for news stories about Jamie Faith’s death.

Surveillance and search

Lopez owned 20 acres of land in Tennessee but his lender had initiated the foreclosure process after he failed to make mortgage payments for several months, authorities said. His water was shut off in October, according to the affidavit.

Aerial images of the property taken in November by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation show horses milling around next to the home. Parked nearby is a black pickup that appears to have the “T” sticker on its rear windshield.

An agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was surveilling the home on Dec. 4 noted that a new sticker had been added to the pickup’s tailgate.

But several days later the “T” sticker had been removed, the affidavit says.

Lopez was arrested Jan. 11, and authorities reported finding a .45-caliber handgun, a cellphone and credit cards in Jennifer Faith’s name inside a vehicle he was in.

At his home, they found another handgun, which authorities say is the murder weapon. They also discovered Red Bulls and DVDs believed to have been purchased at the Arkansas truck stop, as well as a box addressed from Faith to Lopez that had been used to ship a television, according to the affidavit.