A New York woman nicknamed “Black Widow” for the bespoke funereal clothes she wore at the trial for her estranged husband’s killing will be paroled next month after 12 years behind bars.
Barbara Kogan, 77, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and other charges in 2010 in relation to the contract killing of real estate tycoon George Kogan, who was shot three times outside his girlfriend’s Upper East Side apartment in 1990.
A man in a bright green baseball cap, believed to have fired the shots, walked calmly from the scene and has never been caught. Kogan managed to elude arrest for nearly two decades and maintained that she had no knowledge of a plot to murder her husband until it was revealed that prosecutors had tapes of her making incriminating remarks to a friend on a jail telephone.
In a July 7 parole hearing, Kogan claimed to never have planned to collect her husband’s $4 million life insurance policy, the New York Post reported.
Kogan was granted parole after an abrupt apology — “I feel horrible, okay?” — and claiming to have been surprised to find out about her husband’s death.
“Actually, when he was murdered, I was so astounded,” Kogan said via videoconference from Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, NY, contradicting the 2010 plea to conspiracy to commit murder and grand larceny.
One of the parole board members congratulated Kogan after reviewing her record of treatment programs and the volunteer counseling work she has completed.
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“It takes a lot to muster up the strength and endurance to continue on after trauma,” the parole board member said. “We will take that into consideration as well.”
George Kogan’s girlfriend at the time of his death, Mary-Louise Hawkins, told the New York Post she’s “disgusted” that parole was granted.
“My main goal was to make sure she stays away from her sons, because she will coerce them and try to get them to feel sorry for her,” Hawkins said. “They’ve been through enough.”
