Woman Charged With Soliciting 2 Slayings : Crime: A wife wanted to have her husband killed for his insurance money, but then the man who arranged his death got greedy, police say.

A Sepulveda woman was charged Tuesday with soliciting her husband’s murder, then paying assassins to kill the man who arranged the slaying, 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.

Samuels, who police said wanted her husband dead so she could receive insurance payoffs and his business and property, could be sentenced to death if convicted. 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 remote Lockwood Canyon in northeast Ventura County.

Also charged in Bernstein’s killing and facing the death penalty are Paul Edwin Gaul, 26, of Sylmar and Darrell Ray Edwards, 38, of Arleta.

Samuels and Gaul were arrested at their homes Friday, but Los Angeles police were still searching for Edwards. An arraignment for Samuels and Gaul was continued Tuesday until Feb. 9 in San Fernando Municipal Court.

Authorities said all of the suspects and victims were business associates.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Myron L. Jenkins said evidence in the case shows that Samuels gave Bernstein an undisclosed amount of money to hire someone to kill her husband in 1988.

He said it is unclear whether Bernstein hired a killer or killed Robert Samuels himself. Jenkins said at least one more suspect may be unidentified. He said the investigation is continuing.

Los Angeles police said the victim had about $500,000 in insurance policies that paid Mary Ellen Samuels a cash settlement and that retired the mortgages on the couple’s home and their Subway sandwich shop in Van Nuys. She later sold the shop, police said.

Police said that early in their investigation they suspected that Bernstein was involved in the slaying but lacked the evidence to arrest him.

“We were slowly making headway on the case, and we felt he had something to do with it,” Lt. L.A. Durrer said. “Then he winds up dead.”

Authorities said Bernstein was killed June 27, 1989, by Gaul and Edwards, who had been paid by Mary Ellen Samuels. But his badly decomposed body was not found until July. Authorities said he had been lured to Ventura County and killed by the two men. But they declined to release the exact cause of his death other than to say it has been ruled a homicide by the Ventura County coroner.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies joined the police investigation and found evidence that Bernstein was killed because he had sought more money from Mary Ellen Samuels after her husband’s death.

“He continued to ask her for money,” Jenkins said. “So she hired two other people to kill him.”

As a safety precaution for witnesses in the case, authorities declined to describe the evidence that led to the arrests.

Because Bernstein’s death is considered part of a crime originating in Los Angeles, the charges relating to the killing will be prosecuted in Los Angeles County, Jenkins said.