A man accused of asking a fellow inmate at the Baxter county Detention Center to kill or arrange the killing of his mother so he could collect money in a trust fund that his parent oversees appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court last Monday (March 10).
Thirty-six-year-old Daniel Lewis Chentnik who lists an address in rural Gassville is charged with conspiracy to commit murder which is a Class Y felony, the most serious classification of crime in Arkansas not punishable by the death penalty.
He pled not guilty to the charge against him. A new attorney, Bob Estes of Fayetteville, put in his appearance as Chentnik’s attorney during Mondays court session.
According to the probable cause affidavit, a sheriff’s office investigator was told that a male inmate wanted to meet with him. When the meeting took place on December 19 last year, the inmate said he had been spending some time with Chentnik in the recreation area.
He said Chentnik began to talk about how much he disliked his mother and that he wanted to know if the other inmate would kill or arrange the killing of his mother.
Chentnik said if his mother was out of the way, the money in a trust fund left to him by his grandfather would come to him as sole survivor.
Chentnik is alleged to have told the other inmate that the next time he wanted to see the victim would be at her funeral and then only to confirm she was dead.
During his meeting with sheriffs investigators, the inmate said Chentnik offered to give him one of his trucks, a 2016 Chevrolet, as a down payment for the hit job and 10 percent of the money in the trust fund after those funds came to him following his mothers death.
Chentnik said he wanted his mother’s death to look like an accident, according to his fellow inmate. He is alleged to have mentioned a car wreck or a burglary gone wrong.
When the inmate was asked to prove his bona fides, he is reported to have produced a piece of paper with the mother’s name, her address, her health conditions, the address and dimensions of a pole barn in which Chentnik was said to live and the make and model of the truck Chentnik planned to give the other inmate as a down payment.
When the investigators met with Chentnik, he was asked if he got along with his mother. Chentnik is alleged to have replied relations between mother and son were “kind of rocky right now.”
Chentnik was asked if he had ever discussed the trust fund and what would happen to the money if his mother died with any other inmate.
He told investigators a fellow inmate had approached him and a discussion did take place regarding the trust fund and his mothers role in overseeing it.
Chentnik denied ever discussing plans to kill his mother so he could get at the money in the trust fund. He said he was not getting along with his mother at the time “but would never want to harm her.”
At a later point, Chentnik was told that the investigators had received information that he had discussed harming his mother with an inmate.
He also told investigators that he remembered the payment amount was to be a percentage of the trust fund. Chentnik said the inmate he had talked with would not do anything until Chentnik gave him the “go ahead.”
According to the probable cause affidavit, at one point Chentnik was told by investigators that his mother had been contacted and she did not wish to pursue charges against her son. The affidavit does not indicate if the information was true or was being used to help elicit information from Chentnik.
He is now serving a sentence at the Ouachita River Unit of the state corrections system handed down in an earlier case.
A compliance visit to the Gassville home where Chentnik lived was made in mid-September last year and he was arrested on new drug charges.
Those new charges triggered the filing of a revocation petition in a case opened on Chentnik in 2021 after he allegedly confronted security officers and police at Baxter Health armed with multiple weapons.
He was charged with aggravated assault and terroristic threatening, both felonies, and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest.
Mountain Home police officers responded after receiving a call that a man with a gun was in the parking lot at the hospital. When officers located Chentnik, he was reported to have been armed with a handgun, several rifle magazines and wearing a bullet proof vest.
His wife told police when they arrived at the hospital, he called her to the driver’s side of his truck. She saw that he had placed an assault-type rifle under his chin. When his wife told him she was calling 911, he is alleged to have said “he couldn’t pull the trigger on himself, so he would have the police shoot him.”
At one point, Chentnik did drop a handgun in his possession but refused to follow any other commands from police and a Taser was eventually used on him, he was tackled and taken into custody.
During the confrontation, Chentnik suffered injuries and was taken inside the hospital for treatment. He continued to be combative and his arms and legs had to be restrained.
During the confrontation in the parking lot, several people sought safety, some of them ducking behind cars.
Chentnik was put on probation for 36 months in mid-May 2022. It was this probation sentence that was revoked after drugs were found during the compliance visit.
A search of the house where he was living turned up methamphetamine, capsules containing a substance identified as Fentynal, alprazolam pills and marijuana THC concentrate.
A glass smoking pipe was found on a kitchen countertop and two used syringes were in an open safe in Chentnik’s bedroom, according to the probable cause affidavit.
The other person picked up during the compliance visit to the home along County Road 8 in the Gassville area was then 25-year-old Embry Melissa Parks. She was put on probation for six years on November 14 and was ordered into the 14th Judicial District Drug Court Program.
A revocation petition against Parks was filed January 28. The petition alleges Parks violated the terms and conditions of her probation in a number of ways. She is accused of testing positive for drug use, failure to report for a drug test, failed to participate in the 14th Judicial District Drug Court program and failure to appear before Circuit Judge Andrew Bailey during a session of Drug Court.
She appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court (February 10) and pled not guilty to the charges contained in the petition.
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