A decorated U.S. Special Forces medic who killed his girlfriend’s husband wants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to intervene and shorten his six-year prison sentence. He said he deserved leniency because he helped send his girlfriend to prison after he knew she had lied about abuse and “used” him in an elaborate murder plot.

“I became their weapon,” Darrin Lopez, 51, told NBC’s “Dateline” exclusively in his first interview since being sentenced to 62 years in prison for murder. “I understand that.” “The real criminals are going to be in prison for life,” Lopez said at the Dallas County Jail before being transferred to the jail east of Waco. “I helped her get there.” On Oct. 9, 2020, Lopez, 51, shot and killed Jamie Faith, 49, as Faith walked with his wife, Jennifer Faith, outside their Dallas home. dog.

Lopez was convicted and sentenced in July. Last year, in February 2022, Jennifer Faith pleaded guilty to using interstate commerce to commit murder for hire, admitting to prosecutors that she wrongly led Lopez to believe that her husband was physically and sexually abusing her. Abuse.

To learn more about the deadly love triangle, watch “Losing Faith” tonight at 9 ET/8 CT on NBC Dateline.

Rick Calvert, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, told Dateline that in fact, Jamie Faith never did anything to his wife and the charges were fabricated. But Calvert said Jennifer Faith used fake email accounts and photos of previous injuries, as well as a photo of a bloody lip she received from Stock Photo Agency, to convince Lopez otherwise.

Calvert called Faith’s lies, which included violent sexual assaults by multiple people, “the most brutal thing imaginable.”

Jennifer Faith, a speech therapist, and her husband, an IT director at American Airlines, had been together for 15 years and had a teenage daughter when he was shot. During their marriage, Jennifer Faith reconnected with Lopez, whom she dated in high school. The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said the couple’s “emotional affair” lasted seven months.

Lopez retired from the Army after serving six tours of duty in Iraq, said Andrew Cheramie, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who investigated the case. Cerami told Dateline that Lopez won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star but suffered a brain injury in combat.

Lopez’s lawyer, Juan Sanchez, said that Lopez and his wife separated in 2018, and during the epidemic, he lived with his two daughters on a large rural property outside Nashville, Tennessee. Have to become more and more isolated.

“So he’s sitting in front of a computer on this farm,” Sanchez told Dateline. “He said, you know what, I’m going to try to get in touch with her again. He found her on LinkedIn and sent her an email. That’s how it all started.”