NASHUA – Not long after he was arrested for selling cocaine last summer, Dekara Anderson sat in Valley Street jail awaiting a response to a letter he had sent to aquaintances.

But what he received – a charge of criminal solicitation to first-degree murder, to be added to his two felony counts of sale of cocaine – wasn’t the response he was looking for.

What Anderson, 42, a former resident of Massachusetts, apparently didn’t know was that his letter had been returned as undeliverable, and as soon as Corrections officials saw it, they contacted Nashua police.

Now, after several months of negotiations with prosecutors, Anderson has agreed to plead guilty to the three offenses in exchange for 5-10 years in State Prison, according to the terms of the plea deal, which Judge Jacalyn Colburn accepted Friday in Hillsborough County Superior Court South.

The exact sentence, and other terms of the agreement, will be decided Wednesday at a hearing scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in the Nashua court.

Anderson is likely to be sentenced to two, 5-10 year terms in State Prison, to be served concurrently, meaning at the same time.

Anderson and his public defender, Attorney Jeff Odland, had originally been scheduled for a trial management conference Friday, but the proceeding became a plea and sentencing hearing when they and prosecutors notified the court that the agreement had been reached.

The two drug sales charges accuse Anderson of selling cocaine in Nashua on June 28 and July 5, 2017, to a confidential informant working with Nashua police.

Both the charges are subsequent offenses, and therefore special felonies, based on Anderson being previously convicted in Suffolk County in Massachusetts of selling drugs.

According to police reports and court documents, it’s that criminal informant whose murder Anderson was allegedly trying to arrange while he was in jail.

The murder-solicitation case accuses Anderson of writing the letter to an individual, requesting that the “murder of a confidential informant working with Nashua police” be accomplished, according to the indictment.

Assistant County Attorney Lin Li, who prosecuted the case with First Assistant County Attorney Kent Smith, said that Corrections officials contacted Nashua police in late August after receiving the returned letter.

Li said police obtained about a week’s worth of phone calls Anderson made from jail as part of their investigation, but didn’t refer specifically to the contents. She did say that in the letter, Anderson often addressed a person as “baby girl,” through whom he “appeared to solicit” the informant’s murder, according to the allegations.

There were references in the letter to using “zip ties” to “tie up” one or more people to a chair or chairs, and words to the effect of “push a gram of fent into” a person, a reference to the drug fentanyl.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.