Lawyer Got 25 Years for Brokering Hit on Client's Husband But 'Black Widow' Gets Only 12 Years Today
Attorney Manuel Martinez was sentenced to 25 years to life after being convicted of arranging for a client’s wealthy husband to be murdered during a bitter divorce trial in 1990.
But the victim’s wife, so-called “Black Widow” Barbara Kogan, got only a 12-year term today. In a best-case scenario, the 67-year-old could be released in a decade, her lawyer, Barry Levin, tells the New York Daily News.
Prosecutors cut a deal with Kogan, who admitted she paid Martinez $100,000 to arrange the hit on her husband, due to the difficulty of providing an old, circumstantial case against her, the newspaper says. She pleaded guilty to felony manslaughter, conspiracy to commit murder and grand larceny. Martinez, by contrast, was convicted of second-degree murder.
Assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann said Barbara Kogan was driven to commit the crimes by greed and jealousy of the younger woman her 49-year-old husband was seeing, reports the City Room blog of the New York Times. Real estate tycoon George Kogan was shot three times on Oct. 23, 1990 outside the other woman’s Upper East Side apartment.
Barbara Kogan obtained $4.3 million in life insurance from her husband’s death, notes a New York Post article about the sentencing. This was the basis of the grand larceny conviction.
Kogan’s son said he still loves and supports his mother at the sentencing today. A niece pleaded for her aunt to get more time than the agreed 12-year term, but New York Supreme Court Justice RogeHayes said it is “fair to everyone involved and does protect the public interest,” the Times blog recounts.
