It is difficult not to feel sorry for Esther Wadley, a woman who married beneath her, intellectually at any rate. She worked hard, then there was her madness. In her position, most women who want to get rid of an unwanted spouse combined with sole custody of a child, invent stories of abuse, including most disgustingly child sexual abuse. She on the other hand preferred a more direct approach, hiring a hit man to murder him. She tried, ended up recruiting a police officer, then backed out, but she was still convicted.
One issue the programme makers did not tackle, and the authorities appear not to have tackled, is the actual charge: conspiracy to murder. A conspiracy requires at least two people, and if the other one was a police officer...She should properly have been charged with incitement to murder. Not only was she convicted but she was sentenced to the maximum under Missouri law: fifteen years.
At the time this programme was made, she was appealing that conviction; later in the year, she lost that appeal. And everything else including her daughter, although her elderly parents elected to stand by her.