Man gets 35 years for child sex crime, murder plot

Jacksonville Sheriff's Office booking photo of Daniel Lowry

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 33-year-old Jacksonville man was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison, followed by 15 years of sex offender probation for a child sex crime and murder plot.

Daniel Lowry pleaded guilty last year to charges of lewd or lascivious battery, lewd or lascivious molestation and lewd or lascivious exhibition. Lowry was also designated a sex offender.

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His grandmother, Ida Reichelt, was arrested after the sentencing hearing on a charge of retaliation against a witness. Reichelt is accused of threatening to shoot a witness after the witness testified in the hearing.

In March 2013, officers learned that Lowry had been engaged in sexually inappropriate activity with two 15-year-old girls. The investigation revealed that between February and March 2013, Lowry had sex with one of the girls and had touched and exposed himself to the other one.

While in the Duval County Jail, Lowry wrote a letter plotting the murder of the two victims. The letter provided physical descriptions of both girls and where they lived. It also provided a map with instructions on the best time and place to kill the victims and where a gun could be obtained for the murders.

The note stated that the girls needed to be murdered so they could not testify at trial.

After obtaining the letter, a state attorney's office investigator went undercover posing as the man hired for the murders. The investigator was able to recover the gun identified in the letter as the murder weapon.

In August, Lowry was charged with two counts of criminal solicitation, a capital felony crime. He also pleaded guilty to those charges.