He Paid $5,000 to Have His Brother Killed. His Sister Died Instead.

The family had just come home from Christmas shopping.

On the evening of December 14, 2021, three members of the Huggler family were in the garage of a house on Kirkwood Drive, on Evansville's east side, unloading groceries. That's when a man in a camouflage ski mask walked in.

He asked the three to bring their brother outside. Then he pulled a handgun and started firing.

Olivia Huggler was 18 years old. She loved to sing and play the guitar. She was shot that night and died at the hospital the next day. Her brothers, Jonathan and Joseph, were seriously wounded and survived.

The gunman hadn't come for any of them. He'd come for a fourth sibling — paid for by a fifth.

Surveillance footage and family testimony led investigators to Daniel Lawrence Alvey, the masked shooter. Alvey was 18 himself. He told police that Samuel Huggler — Olivia, Jonathan, and Joseph's own brother — had agreed to pay him $5,000 to kill Jonathan. Prosecutors say Samuel directed him to kill Jonathan and any witnesses.

A brother put a price on a brother's head. Five thousand dollars.

Prosecutors charged both men with murder. But the case nearly died in 2022: Alvey refused to testify against Samuel, even after being granted immunity, and by June the prosecutor's office had to dismiss the charges. The dismissal was "without prejudice" — legal language that meant the state could come back if it ever got its witness.

In 2023, it got him. Alvey pleaded guilty and took 45 years in prison. One condition of his deal: he would testify against Samuel Huggler in any future proceedings.

In January 2024, Prosecutor Diana Moers re-filed the charges and a warrant went out. But Samuel was gone. He had fled to Andorra, a tiny mountainous country in southern Europe that has no extradition treaty with the United States. On paper, it was the perfect hiding place — American law could not reach in and pull him out.

Then he made his mistake. Days later, Samuel slipped over the border into Valencia, Spain. Spain does cooperate. The FBI and Spanish authorities apprehended him, and he was sent back to Evansville to stand trial.

In August 2026, after a seven-day trial, a jury found him guilty of four felonies: aiding, inducing, or causing murder; conspiracy to commit murder; and two counts of aiding, inducing, or causing attempted murder. Alvey, the shooter, testified against the man who hired him.

On Wednesday, October 21, Circuit Court Judge Ryan D. Hatfield sentenced Samuel Steven Huggler, now 30, to 120 years in prison: 60 years for Olivia's murder, 35 for the attempted murder of Jonathan, 25 for the attempted murder of Joseph — all of it consecutive, one sentence stacked on the next. Members of his own family, including the brothers who survived his plot, gave victim impact statements.

Prosecutors had asked for life without parole. They didn't get it, but Chief Deputy Prosecutor Winston Lin noted Huggler must serve the majority of the 120 years, making it unlikely he will ever walk free again. Prosecutor Moers put it plainly: no sentence can undo the loss of Olivia.

Olivia's obituary described her as faithful, loyal, and true to everything and everyone. "She was strong and gentle," it read.

Think about how this ended. The brother Samuel marked for death lived, and stood in court to face him. The sister who was never a target — who was just unloading groceries ten days before Christmas — is the one who didn't come home. And the man who set it all in motion ran to the one country on the map that couldn't send him back, then crossed one border too many.

He got 120 years for it. He'll be answering for December 14, 2021 for the rest of his life.

Verified against the Evansville Courier & Press and WOMI. For the photo, the Courier & Press ran courtroom shots of him — his booking photo from the 2025 extradition is the other real-photo option.