How much would you pay to have your wife killed?

Baltimore plumber George Thompson offered $20,000, police say, and now he faces a much higher price: up to life in prison.

The charges have shut down his "A"-rated company, GT Thompson's Inc., and left his customers wondering what happened to a man who by all accounts was a good plumber.

"He never seemed he had a screw loose," says a former customer. "He talked about his wife, and often when I called, she was the one who answered and set up the appointments."

Do his criminal charges make her uneasy? Absolutely, to the point she asked that her name be kept out of this story for fear of retaliation.

Thompson, 37, proved a better plumber than alleged plotter. According to the arrest report, the man Thompson asked to do the killing, identified in court records as Keith Love, went to police, who recorded the pair's subsequent conversations. Two days later, on June 12, police arrested Thompson on charges of conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder.

Amanda Thompson and the couple's three sons were unharmed.

Property records indicate outward success - a move from a 2,633-square-foot house in Lutherville Timonium to a 4,142-square-foot house on 10 acres in Fallston - at the same time court records tell of personal struggles.

By the time of his arrest, Thompson owed more than $31,000 in unpaid alimony and child support.

His attorney, Joseph Murtha, says he will seek bail for his client. In the meantime, Thompson's plumbing business is closed. Murtha said he asks only that his client "enjoy the presumption of innocence that is afforded him under our system of justice."

Murtha also defended Linda Tripp during the Clinton administration's Monica Lewinsky scandal. Tripp recorded phone conversations with Lewinsky, and was charged with violating Maryland's wire-tapping laws. The charges were later dismissed.

Tape recordings play a key role in the Thompson case as well.

Thompson wanted his wife, "beaten and killed," according to the arrest report, which offers as a motive only that Thompson complained about his wife and the pending divorce. The report says police recorded Thompson and Love as they walked the woods near his estranged wife's 10-acre Fallston property and discussed how to kill her. Later, as they parted ways, Thompson handed Love a brick and told him "he could use it if he needed to," according to the report.

A few minutes later, state troopers pulled Thompson over on State Route 165 and arrested him.

Murder-for-hire schemes are rarely successful, says Jeffrey Ian Ross, criminologist and associate professor at the University of Baltimore. Murder is something people try to keep secret, and hiring somebody to do it "expands the circle of knowledge," he says. "The only people who are successful in having somebody else kill somebody is organized crime."

That George Thompson could run a successful business while allegedly plotting to kill his wife just points to people's ability to compartmentalize their lives, Ross says.

"People have that amazing capacity," he says. "They can be a plumber by day and a killer by night."