By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — She may not have pulled the trigger, but she paid $100,000 to have her husband rubbed out and now — after twenty years — she'll finally pay for it in prison.
Barbara Kogan, dubbed the "black widow" by the tabloids, finally admitted Thursday she hired an assassin two decades ago to gun down her estranged husband in front of his mistress' Upper East Side apartment.
Shortly before, she had taken out a large life insurance policy behind his back and made calls to ensure she was the sole beneficiary.
When pleading guilty to manslaughter and conspiracy charges, Kogan, 67, said she lied to the insurance company and investigators about her involvement in the murder so she could collect a $4.3 million payout from George Kogan's policy.
It was previously established that George Kogan's death was a contract killing.
Barbara Kogan's former lawyer, Manuel Martinez, 60, was convicted of murder and criminal solicitation in 2008 for George Kogan's death for his role in orchestrating the plot.
According to transcripts of Thursday's court proceedings, Kogan and Martinez went to Puerto Rico "for the purpose of getting money for the hit."
The bitter wife admitted she gave the hired gun a photograph of George so that the hit man could identify him on the street, she said Thursday.
"There there come a time when Mr. Martinez and you discussed having your husband killed by hiring a hit man to do that?" asked Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann.
"Yes," Kogan answered.
Her guilty plea came as a trial was pending, finally bringing closure to one of Manhattan's most puzzling murders.
She is facing up to 25 years in prison under the plea which she reportedly accepted to spare her sons from having to testify.
At the time of George Kogan's death, the couple was in the midst of what prosecutors called "nasty divorce litigation," during which George reportedly dated a younger woman, a blond who lived on East 69th Street.
Having suspicions, the insurance company did not give up Barbara Kogan's prize so fast.
She was sued by the insurance company, she said in court Thursday, and did not get her payout until years later because of legal questions from the insurance company.
"Do you know who might have wanted to kill George?" she was asked in depositions in the early 1990s over the insurance policy.
Kogan said she didn't know.
