'Black widow': Victim decries parole of NY wife who called hit on estranged husband, calls her 'an animal’
Almost three decades ago, Mary-Louise Hawkins ran out of her apartment on New York's Upper East Side after she heard three gunshots - only to find her married, millionaire boyfriend George Kogan lying on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood. Hawkins has kept her silence since the tragic October 23, 1990 murder, but is now speaking out because Barbara Kogan -- the estranged wife who ordered the hit -- is reportedly being released on parole.
“She’s an animal,” Hawkins told the New York Post of the horror woman dubbed in tabloids as the 'Black Widow.' “Barbara is extremely good at manipulating people — even parole officers," she added.
77-year-old Kogan, who was allegedly having her hair done as her husband took his final breaths at a New York hospital, eluded the law for the next two decades before she was finally taken into custody in 2008. However, she is now set to be paroled next month - after serving only 12 years in prison. According to the report, Kogan is being freed despite a "farcical" parole hearing that took place on July 7 and saw her claim she never intended to cash in on her estranged husband's $4 million life insurance policy.
A transcript of the proceeding reportedly also revealed that Kogan said she was shocked to learn her husband had been shot. “Actually, when he was murdered, I was so astounded,” Kogan told two parole board members via video link from Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, NY - blatantly contradicting her 2010 plea to conspiracy to commit murder and grand larceny.
"I didn’t even — I didn’t think it was me,” the 'Black Widow' said, nicknamed as such for the funereal clothes she’d reportedly wear to court. “I thought, ‘What is going on here?”
"Kogan’s claimed befuddlement, her clean prison discipline record, and her brusque apology — 'I feel horrible, okay?' she snapped at one point — were apparently enough to convince the parole board that she can be safely released back into society," The Post's Laura Italiano wrote.
Hawkins, however, is not convinced. She married and made a new life for herself in Europe, but frequently returned to Manhattan to meet with prosecutors, testify before several grand juries, and help prosecutors convict Manuel Martinez, Barbara's drug-addled divorce lawyer, of arranging the murder for $40,000.
It took nearly two decades for Kogan to see the insides of a prison cell, during which she waged a war of harassment against Hawkins and her family. Hawkins shared with The Post a victim impact letter she wrote to the parole board. “She managed to obtain my parents’ unlisted telephone number and occasionally dialed them in the middle of the night in order to catch them off guard — to remind them yet again that she wanted the money and valuables she thought George had left behind,” she wrote the parole board.
In 1993, three years after the murder, Hawkins fled to Europe in a bid to escape the press as well as Kogan's apparent wrath.
But “just as I would begin to breathe,” she wrote, “thinking I was finally free of her, either Barbara or one of her hirelings would call unexpectedly with more than a hint of malice.” She also told the parole board how she had never been able to get over the "cruelty and senselessness" of George Kogan's demise. “You have no idea what real panic and despair is until you see someone you love lying face down in a pool — no, a torrent of blood,” Hawkins added.