Documents detail Graziano's murder-for-hire plot

Joe the Hit Man was to follow Debra Graziano as she drove in her car, then run her off the road. If she survived the faked accident, Joe would go over to her crumpled wreck, lean in and break her neck.

That was the plan.

Edward Graziano, Debra's estranged husband, was willing to pay $2,100 to have it carried out.

This is the picture that emerges from hundreds of pages of documents that Edward Graziano's attorney, John Trevena, has received from prosecutors as part of the evidence-swapping process that precedes a criminal trial.

Graziano, 53, was arrested Feb. 26 on a charge of solicitation to commit murder. He is being held at the Pinellas County Jail.

The evidence includes recordings and documents Pinellas County sheriff's investigators compiled as they surreptitiously monitored a private investigator who had done some work for Graziano but began working against him after he discovered Graziano wanted 56-year-old Debra killed, the documents show.

The release of the documents comes as the Graziano family is locked in a civil suit with famed former wrestler Hulk Hogan and Hogan's family. The Grazianos' son John was the passenger in a car wrecked by Hogan's son, Nick Bollea, on Aug. 26, 2007, leaving the former Marine with brain damage. He is in the James A. Haley Veterans Administration Hospital in Tampa.

At the time of the alleged murder-for-hire plot, Edward Graziano didn't have a job and was in fear of losing his home, the documents state. One motive for having his wife killed is that, without her, he would be in charge of John Graziano's care - and have at his access any funds won in the court battle with the Hogans, according to the documents.

"You know I probably won't have to work because I would get paid for taking care of him," Edward Graziano tells the private investigator in one of the tapes, referring to his son.

But Edward Graziano also wavered on whether he actually wanted his wife of 29 years killed, according to the picture painted by the documents. Almost up until the point he handed over the cash and a check to the private investigator at a Sunoco station, he was second-guessing his decision, according to the documents.