Man allegedly plants tracking device in wife's car to plan beating

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- A Massachusetts man is accused of using a GPS device to mastermind a brutal attack on his estranged wife and her boyfriend.
   
According to court documents, Hubert Hartley had threatened to kill his estranged wife if she ever left him with their children, and that he would have "someone else do it."

That someone else was his nephew who has been convicted for assault, and Monday Hartley was in court on the hook for planning the hit.

More than a year after his estranged wife and her boyfriend were brutally beaten in a Portsmouth house, 42-year-old Hubert "Jr" Hartley faced a judge. He was accused of being the mastermind of the attack, angry at his wife for leaving him after her alleged adultery and taking their two children.

"You really don't expect that around here, but it can happen anywhere," said Ed Black, a neighbor.

Black remembers the massive police presence in his neighborhood.

Portsmouth police say Hubert Hartley planted a GPS monitoring device in his wife Janice 's car to track her movements. Then he allegedly sent his nephew, 47-year-old Terrence Hartley to the address to brutally beat Janice Hartley and her boyfriend, Portsmouth firefighter Sam Chouinard with a metal bat while wearing a "Jason"-style mask.

Black remembers Terrence's arrest just blocks away from the scene of the crime in the area of Ocean Road.

"The perpetrator actually was on a motorcycle and he had walked down here from over here," Black said. "They didn't have any problem catching him, though. He didn't really hide the fact that, you know they caught him pretty quickly.""

Seven months ago, Terrence Hartley was sentenced to 15  to 30 years in prison for carrying out the attack and at the time told police he acted alone. But after tracking the GPS device and text messages to Hubert's iPhone, police issued an arrest warrant and he turned himself in last month.

Hubert Hartley was ordered to stay away from the victims. He was released on the same $10,000 bail he posted when he was arrested in October.