Wife Charged in Murder of Husband, Assassin

A Sepulveda woman was charged Tuesday with soliciting her husband’s murder, then paying assassins to kill the man who allegedly arranged her husband’s death, authorities said. Two San Fernando Valley men were also charged in the second death plot.

Mary Ellen Samuels, 41, faces two counts of murder with the special circumstance of soliciting a killing for financial gain. Police said Samuels wanted her husband dead so she could receive insurance payments and his business and property. She was being held without bail at the Van Nuys jail.

The victims were Samuel’s husband, Robert Samuels, 40, who was shot to death Dec. 9, 1988, in the couple’s home in the 15800 block of Bahama Street, and James Bernstein, 26, of Reseda, whose body was found July 23, 1989, in Lockwood Canyon in Ventura County.

Also charged in Bernstein’s killing are Paul Edwin Gaul, 26, of Sylmar, and Darrell Ray Edwards, 38, of Arleta. Samuels and Gaul were arrested Friday but police were still searching for Edwards.