As her husband lay bleeding on a hospital operating table in October, 1990 — dying from bullets she paid for — killer millionairess Barbara Kogan had stayed home, handing a beautician $500 to do her hair.
But it’ll be prison haircuts for the next decade — currently $3 a cut out of her commissary fund — for Kogan, who was sentenced today at an emotional hearing two decades in the making.
“I loved them both,” victim George Kogan’s son, Scott, 43, told the court in a tearful victim impact statement.
“And I still do,” he added, trembling.
“Today, I still offer my love and support to my mother, as a son,” he said, turning to face his mother, who did not meet his eyes.
Kogan, 67 — dubbed the Black Widow, a nod both to her venomous soul and her penchant for expensive black clothing — was sentenced today to serve a minimum of ten more years for conspiring to have her husband, George, gunned down in front of his 25-year-old mistress’s Upper East Side apartment.
She’d spent most of the past 20 years eluding prosecution — even as her former divorce lawyer was convicted of murder for brokering the hit — and spending the $4.3 million proceeds from the four insurance policies she’d taken out on his life.
The Black Widow was a portrait in washed-out gray today, though, from her charcoal suit to her Brillowy hair, pulled back in a ponytail.
She wore a countenance of granite, revealing nothing and saying little during the sentencing, except for a quiet, “No” when asked by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Roger Hayes if she wanted to speak.
Her son and George’s heartbroken niece had plenty to say.
“For 20 years, I’ve thought of this day, when I could face Barbara Kogan and call you a murderer and a villain to your face — but it still won’t bring my uncle back,” said the niece, Taryn Kogan, 31.
She was just 12 when her beloved Uncle George died — but still remembers vividly the funeral.
“I will never forget the funeral because Barbara occasionally smirked at me,” Taryn said, the affront still fresh in her voice. “Who smirks at a loved one during her husband’s funeral?”
Even the victim’s former mistress, Mary Louise Hawkins, weighed in via a letter read into the record by assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann.
“Nearly 20 years have passed, and I doubt any of the individuals would have recovered by now — no one who was close to George Kogan,” she wrote.
She noted her own “struggles” with the death, but saved her most tender sympathies for Kogan’s two sons, Scott and William, who were just in their early 20s when their own mother killed their father — what she termed “an act of wanton evil.”
“This is the quandary Bill and Scott must grapple with their entire lives,” she said.
For Seidemann, the sentencing marked the conclusion of 20 years of work — he’d been assigned to assist on the case as a young prosecutor just one week after the murder.
“One must call it what it is — it’s a cold blooded murder, a contract killing,” he said.
He, too, recounted the behavior of the black but merry widow at George Kogan’s funeral, “She played up the role of the grieving widow at the funeral,” he said, “showing up in sunglasses, claiming to be grateful for the good years she had with George.”
Kogan pleaded guilty in April to manslaughter, conspiracy and grand larceny — for the insurance money she stole by making her husband’s death look like a murder she’d had nothing to do with.
She was officially sentenced today to a term of between 12 and 24 years prison, meaning the earliest she can plead for release from a parole board is 12 years from now. But she gets credit for the two years she’s already served while awaiting the conclusion of her case, meaning she could be released within 10 years.