BATTERY PARK CITY — A Manhattan housewife has been arrested for trying to hire a hit man for $60,000 worth of rare postage stamps and jewelry to kill her unemployed husband following a dispute over money, DNAinfo New York has learned.
The woman, Elena Sava Adams, 57, was grabbed by cops when she met with an undercover officer from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office who was posing as an assassin willing to kill her husband, Irving Adams, 66, who lost his job as the chief compliance officer at Israel Discount Bank of New York several years ago.
According to sources, Adams, who is a Romanian national, allegedly had been arguing with her husband about the amount of money he was giving her to make ends meet.
She apparently told an acquaintance on Monday that she wanted to kill her husband and was willing to hire a hit man to run him over with a car, sources said. Investigators believe she was out to collect on life insurance money.
According to cops, Elena Adams planned to have lunch with her husband on Sept. 1. After eating, they were supposed to cross Avenue Z at 11th Street, where the hitman was meant to run her husband over.
She chose to have her clandestine meetings in Brooklyn because she believed the borough has fewer surveillance cameras than Manhattan, sources said.
The go-between, however, went to detectives at the 61st Precinct and told them about the plot. The NYPD contacted the DA’s office because of its expertise in sending undercovers who pose as contract killers, sources said.
The undercover contacted Elena Adams, and she allegedly told the faux hit man that she had valuable jewelry and stamps that she would give him as payment if he carried out the $60,000 contract.
They met earlier Thursday in a parking lot at East 16th Street and Sheepshead Bay Road in Sheepshead Bay. She got into his car, and they drove over to Shore Parkway where she handed over the items, which were rare German postage stamps that she said were very valuable, and detailed her husband's movements. She was then arrested.
The wife was taken to the 61st Precinct station house in Coney Island where she was being held late Thursday, according to sources.
A neighbor on the 10th floor of their Battery Park City high rise said the couple was eccentric.
"They're odd," he said. "He used to throw out the recyclables in his boxers. They used to live on Krispy Kreme and pizza."
But the couple showed no sign of financial strain, he said.
"They used to go on ski trips once or twice a year," the neighbor said. He said the wife showed him photos of the weeks-long vacations on her camera phone. She told him that they also owned a house in Romania.
He never heard them fight or saw any outward signs of domestic violence, he said.
"It's a shock," he said. "It's not something you expect from your neighbors."
Thursday night detectives were still interviewing Irving Adams in his apartment. He did not come to the door for comment.
