GOLDEN, Colo.—A woman accused of trying to arrange the slaying of her ex-husband over a child custody dispute crossed the line between venting frustrations and committing a crime when she told an investigator posing as a hit man what she wanted done to her husband, a prosecutor argued in court Thursday.
Standing with your friends at a water cooler and saying you want your husband dead is one thing, prosecutor Ben Sollars told jurors during opening statements in Elinor Dvir’s trial.
“When you meet with a stranger and talk about having your husband taken out in a specific manner, you jump from frustration venting to solicitation,” he said.
Dvir is facing her second trial on solicitation of first-degree murder and other counts. Her first trial ended in a hung jury in March when jurors failed to reach a verdict. She is accused of trying to arrange the slaying of Richard Nedlin, a deputy district attorney for Pitkin County.
During opening statements, Dvir’s defense attorney Bridgette Klauber claimed entrapment. Klauber said an undercover investigator from the 1st Judicial District Attorney’s office created the crime by showing up uninvited at Dvir’s home and secretly recorded a conversation where she spoke about killing her ex-husband.
“This is more complex than this is explained to you,” Klauber told jurors. “It will be clear that Elinor Dvir is not guilty.”
On a recording played for the jury by Sollars, Dvir talked about having her ex-husband’s necked cracked to leave him a “veggie,” or killed by “stuffing his body with cocaine” to make his death look like an accident. She also talks about disposing of the body by taking it to a “meat place” and talks about paying $1,500 to $2,000 to have her husband killed.
“I don’t want a body laying around,” Dvir can be heard saying on the recording. “If the body is being laid around, it’s a homicide… If it’s a homicide then there is a police investigation.”
Dvir also can be heard telling the would-be hit man to kill Nedlin’s wife if he has to.
Nedlin had filed a petition in 2008 to terminate Dvir’s parental rights to her daughter, who was born after she and Nedlin met online and started dating in 2003.
“I want her back and the only way to do it is to get rid of them,” Dvir can be heard on the tape, refering to her ex-husband and his wife.
Klauber said Dvir, an Israeli national, spent about two years in detention on an immigration violation and couldn’t afford an attorney to help her until 2008. She didn’t see her daughter for three years.
“She is a woman who is so without resources… so desperate that she is working as an escort,” Klauber said.
She said a driver for the escort service, who contacted police about Dvir wanting her ex-husband killed, recieved about $8,000 in goods and services for his cooperation.
