Rutherford, a 30-year-old female Alabama teacher was charged with having sex with at least four high school students and involving at least one of them in a plot to kill her husband, a former gym teacher at the same small school.
Sharon Linton Rutherford, a teacher at Coffeeville High School, was charged with solicitation of murder, first-degree rape, second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes. Authorities said two of her victims were under age 16.
School officials were first alerted in 2005 by an anonymous letter that Rutherford was having sex with students, but their investigation failed to turn up any confirmation. Then on April 5, one of the students told Principal Janice Richardson that he had slept with the teacher.
Coffeeville High School is a small school with only 110 students. Rutherford's husband James now teachers physical education in Washington County, Alabama.