Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Donna Moonda enters U.S. District Court in Youngstown yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Dr. Gulam Moonda was worth millions and his wife was charged yesterday with having him killed so she could collect them.

Donna Moonda, who has maintained that her husband's shooting death on the Ohio Turnpike was the work of a mysterious robber, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Youngstown.

Her arrest came about three hours after her former lover, Damian Bradford, told a judge he killed Dr. Moonda with a bullet to the face. In conversations with investigators from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Mr. Bradford said he and Mrs. Moonda teamed up to commit the crime.

Mr. Bradford said she wanted Dr. Moonda shot, but it had to look like a robbery, not murder. The motive was money.

Mr. Bradford said he expected to receive a seven-figure payoff for killing the 69-year-old urologist from Mercer County, Pa.

He said Mrs. Moonda promised to give him half of the $3 million to $6 million she expected to collect in inheritance and life insurance.

Had the Moondas divorced, she would have been limited to a $250,000 settlement because of a contract they signed before getting married in 1990.

Now life insurance proceeds, totaling $676,000, and at least $6 million more from Dr. Moonda's estate are frozen because of the homicide investigation and complexity of his will.

More significant to prosecutors is that the alliance between Mr. Bradford, 25, and 47-year-old Mrs. Moonda is finished.

In pleading guilty in federal court in Akron, Ohio, Mr. Bradford agreed to cooperate with the U.S. attorney's staff in its prosecution of Mrs. Moonda. If he does, he could serve as little as 17 ¹/₂ years in prison. Had he gone to trial and been convicted, he might have gotten a life sentence.

U.S. District Judge David Dowd said he will delay a decision on Mr. Bradford's punishment to see if he keeps his promise to help prosecutors.

Mrs. Moonda, wearing glasses, blue jeans and a yellow striped shirt, looked haggard when her lawyers brought her to the federal courthouse in Youngstown, where she surrendered. She waded through a line of microphones and cameras in silence.

She next appeared in a courtroom in handcuffs, where the court staff gave her and her lawyers a copy of the charges against her.

Mrs. Moonda is accused of aiding and abetting interstate stalking, and aiding and abetting the use of a firearm in a violent crime. If convicted, she easily could spend the rest of her life in prison.

Those charges were variations of the ones brought against Mr. Bradford. He pleaded guilty to a firearms charge and to interstate stalking, which prosecutors said is comparable to murder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Kelley said the government hopes to keep Mrs. Moonda incarcerated while the case against her moves through court. U.S. Magistrate George Limbert ordered that Mrs. Moonda be jailed at least until Friday, when she will have a bail hearing in Akron.

The government also will have to reveal some of its evidence against Mrs. Moonda to support its charges that she arranged her husband's death on May 13, 2005.

In an arrest affidavit filed yesterday, Sgt. Gerald Funelli of the Ohio highway patrol said Mr. Bradford already has begun providing details of how he and Donna Moonda worked together to commit the killing. Mr. Bradford gave his first detailed interview to the highway patrol on Friday, even before his plea bargain was official.

Mr. Bradford said they decided Dr. Moonda would be killed on the turnpike, Ohio's busiest highway. He would act the part of a robber and shoot the doctor. Mrs. Moonda, a witness, would cover for him with a story designed to throw police off track.

Other sources told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Mr. Bradford and Mrs. Moonda planned the killing for months.

Mr. Bradford said he obtained a 9-millimeter "street gun" -- an unregistered weapon purchased illegally -- to kill Dr. Moonda. He also told authorities that, in the early afternoon the day of the killing, he and Mrs. Moonda met to discuss the timing.

The attack on Dr. Moonda would come during a 200-mile family trip from Hermitage in Mercer County to Toledo, Ohio. Mrs. Moonda's mother, Dorothy Smouse, was along for the ride.

Mrs. Moonda pulled the family Jaguar into an emergency pull-off along the turnpike about 15 miles south of Cleveland. There, Mr. Bradford said, he went at Dr. Moonda, who stepped out of the passenger side of the Jaguar because he thought he was about to take over the driving.

Mr. Bradford said he ordered the doctor to get back in the car. Then he stole Dr. Moonda's wallet, shot him and fled.

He got off the turnpike at the next exit, paid his toll and then headed back east on the turnpike for his return trip to Pennsylvania.

Once Mr. Bradford arrived in Beaver County, where he lived at the time, he went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, drawing notice because he was late.

Meantime, Mr. Bradford said, Donna Moonda began the coverup.

Sgt. Funelli said she told investigators the shooter was a diminutive man -- 5-feet-2 to 5-feet-4 -- and of "unknown race." Mr. Bradford is about 6 feet tall and black.

As for Mrs. Moonda's mother, she initially said the killer was a black man. She later changed her story, telling the highway patrol she was unsure of his race. Mrs. Smouse is not a suspect in the crime.

Before police arrived at the shooting, Donna Moonda and her mother flagged down a passing motorist. But Donna Moonda misled the man about the severity of what had happened, Sgt. Funelli said.

The man called 911 on his cell phone, believing Mrs. Moonda needed help for a nose bleed. She never told him her husband had been shot.

None of these details were discussed during Mrs. Moonda's initial court appearance, which was attended by about 20 friends and relatives of her late husband. They had been tipped by police that, 14 months after the killing, she finally would be arrested.

Prosecutors will not discuss their tactics, but they may have thought the stronger of the two cases was against Mr. Bradford. They brought an indictment against him in March, built around cell phone records.

Cellular tower tracking showed him following the Moondas the day of the killing. The patrol revealed yesterday that Mr. Bradford also took and received cell phone calls as he drove home after killing Dr. Moonda.

He said he ditched the doctor's wallet along the eastbound turnpike after removing about $3,000 in $50 bills. His thievery would help investigators.

They raided his apartment a week after the killing, having learned that he and Mrs. Moonda were having an affair at the time of the killing. Police found 19 $50 bills that day. Mrs. Moonda had told them that her husband carried a wad of fifties, so the discovery bolstered the idea that Mr. Bradford was involved in the killing.

Mr. Bradford's attorney, Michael DeRiso of Monroeville, said a combination of factors caused him to plead guilty and turn against Mrs. Moonda.

Mr. DeRiso called the cell phone records "damaging," but said another piece of evidence that he would not identify was perhaps even more compelling. The defense saw it last week and told Mr. Bradford the government had a powerful case.

Then Niki Z. Schwartz, Mrs. Moonda's lawyer, sent word that she would take the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions when called as a government witness at Mr. Bradford's trial.

So, instead of describing the killer as a mystery man who stood at least a half-foot shorter than Mr. Bradford, she would refuse to answer when asked if Mr. Bradford was the shooter.

Fearing he alone could be convicted, Mr. Bradford authorized his lawyers to try to make a deal. They did, landing an agreement that recommends he serve less time that the standard penalty for the firearm and interstate stalking charges.

"He's done the right thing, in his mind, by stepping up to the plate," Mr. DeRiso said.

Mr. Bradford, dressed in a cream-colored suit, was a model of politeness as he answered Judge Dowd's questions. Then his mother, Sharon Bradford, stormed into court 35 minutes late and argued with U.S. marshals about whether she could stay.

Judge Dowd seemed not to notice the sideshow. Reporters cleared a seat for Sharon Bradford and she watched as her son admitted to killing another man in cold blood.

Minutes later, Sharon Bradford wept as he was led back to jail in handcuffs, this time as a convicted felon.

Mr. Bradford, described by the highway patrol as "a small-time cocaine dealer," met Donna Moonda in 2004, after both landed in a Beaver County drug-rehabilitation center. She had been caught stealing fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, from the hospital in Greenville, Mercer County, where she worked as a nurse anesthetist.

They began an affair. Soon, Mrs. Moonda was buying him clothes, jewelry and even vehicles, the highway patrol said in its affidavit.

He said she told him he could have much more if he killed her husband.

Mr. Bradford did not have to discuss many details of the crime when entering his guilty plea. The only emotion he showed in court was when he turned and saw his mother in tears. He winced.

Outside, Mr. DeRiso was asked whether his client is remorseful.

"Sure he is,'' Mr. DeRiso said.