The wife of a New York dentist who hired a relative to kill her husband had planned to film the murder in case she was double-crossed by the hitman, prosecutors say.
Mazoltuv Borukhova, 35, also arranged for the hitman to shoot her husband in a public park in front of their daughter so she would not become a suspect herself, Queens Supreme Court heard.
Borukhova hired her distant cousin Mikhail Mallayev to kill her husband in order to gain full custody of their four-year-old daughter, prosecutors told the court.
The dentist, who had won temporary custody of their child one week earlier, was delivering the girl for a supervised visit with her mother when he was shot dead in October 2007.
Borukhova had allegedly bought a button-hole camera to film the murder.
"It was insurance on him in case he double-crossed her," the New York Post newspaper quoted prosecutor Brad Leventhal as telling the jury.
But Borukhova could not figure out how to work the camera and Mallayev killed her husband before she arrived, he said.
The murder was well planned to divert suspicion away from Borukhova, Leventhal argued.
"The whole idea to do it on a Sunday morning in a park in front of people was to eliminate herself (Borukhova) as a suspect," Leventhal told the jurors.
"Who possibly would think she was a suspect if she had it done it in front of her kid?"
Borukhova and Mallayev have both been charged with Malakov's murder, with the jury preparing to make their deliberations this week.
Police found Mallayev's fingerprints on a makeshift silencer and a witness testified that she saw him shoot Malakov twice.
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