A crooked lawyer who hired a hit man so his client could get rid of her wealthy husband was convicted yesterday of the nearly two-decade-old murder.
The sensational assassination of George Kogan took place on the Upper East Side in October 1990. He was shot three times in the back as he approached the front door of his mistress’ East 69th Street apartment. He died hours later, with his girlfriend at his bedside.
Prosecutors said the lawyer, Manuel Martinez, 57, set up the hit for his client, Barbara Kogan, who received of a $4 million insurance windfall.
A jury deliberated three days in the tricky, circumstantial case complicated by the passage of 18 years.
Kogan was a millionaire real-estate investor who had interests in a casino in Puerto Rico and in several Brooklyn buildings. Cops at the time said he was also embroiled in a divorce battle with his wife, from whom he’d separated in 1988.
They had two grown sons, Scott and William.
The year after the couple broke up, Kogan moved in with Mary Louise Hawkins, 28, a Manhattan publicist for the Kogans’ antique store on East 76th Street. They lived in her apartment on East 69th Street.
The alleged hit man has never been charged. Nor has Barbara Kogan, who is believed to be in Puerto Rico.
“He had one foot in the legal world and the other foot in the underworld,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said of the shady lawyer in closing arguments.
Martinez had been in a Mexican prison for drug charges for much of the last decade, and was extradited for the murder case in March 2007.