A man who Centre County prosecutors said twice tried to hire fellow jail inmates to murder an informant in a drug case has been sentenced to years in prison.
Mark C. Hackett, 64, of Clearfield County, was sentenced by Centre County Judge Julia Rater last week to eight to 16 years in state prison, plus another five years for a parole violation, after pleading no contest to a charge of solicitation of murder and guilty to one felony count of delivering methamphetamine.
Hackett was jailed at the Centre County Correctional Facility in July 2024 for selling meth to a confidential police informant. Three months later, another inmate told state police that Hackett was attempting to hire a hit man and had offered him up to $10,000 to kill the informant, according to investigators.
The plan, state police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause, was for Hackett’s girlfriend, Amanda L. Zortman, 46, of Clearfield County, to pick up the man when he was released from rehab and drive him to Huntingdon, where he would provide or directly inject the informant with a “hotshot” of fentanyl. Hackett discussed the plot in recorded calls and messages with Zortman over the ensuing months and repeatedly brought up the plan with the other inmate, according to the affidavit.
“By coming forward when Mark Hackett asked the inmate to kill another person, the inmate may well have saved a life,” Assistant District Attorney Matt Metzger said in a statement on Thursday. “Hackett’s attempt to kill an informant speaks to a dangerous methamphetamine-fueled thought process which, in conjunction with his drug dealing, put the broader community at risk. Thanks to the courage of cooperating witnesses and the diligent efforts of the Pennsylvania State Police, the community is now a safer place.”
Police also spoke to the informant, who said Hackett was trying to have him killed and that someone had broken into his former residence in November 2024, according to the affidavit.
Hackett and Zortman were both charged in March 2025 with soliciting and conspiracy to commit murder. Zortman denied knowing “anything about killing anybody” and said she believed she was picking up the other inmate to set him up in a camper on her property, police wrote at the time.
After her her arrest, however, Zortman told investigators that Hackett also discussed the plan with another man when they were both inmates in Clearfield County, according to an affidavit. Similar to the original plan, Zortman was to take the Clearfield inmate after his release to kill the informant, police wrote.
In an interview with investigators, the Clearfield inmate said Hackett offered him $10,000 in February, while both were lodged in the same jail, to kill a confidential informant who needed to “go away,” according to the affidavit. The plan, he allegedly told police, was for Zortman to connect him with the informant, whom he would befriend then give the lethal dose of fentanyl.
Charges against Zortman are still pending in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas, according to court records.
