. http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-01-31/News_and_Views/Crime_File/a-139906.asp
She Tells of Plot To Kill 1st Hubby
By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY and OWEN MORITZ
Daily News Staff Writers
Brooklyn mother testified yesterday she and the ex-con who became her second husband plotted to rub out her first husband because their sizzling affair was out of control.
Taking the stand in a Brooklyn murder trial, Vanessa Foote Richardson said she and Jeffrey Richardson were lovers in late 1996 when they plotted to kill Kevin Foote, her accountant husband of five years.
Foote was shot to death by a masked robber on Dec. 21, 1996. Vanessa and Richardson were married three months later and fled to Georgia.
"Things were really heating up between us, and he [Richardson] said to me, 'Let's poison your husband,'" she testified.
"I said, 'No I can't do that,'" Richardson went on.
"Then he said, 'I will park him,'" she continued, understanding the word "park" meant kill.
Momentarily stunned, she said she asked her lover, "You're not scared to kill someone?"
At that point, after defense objections, Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Anne Feldman halted Foote Richardson's testimony. After meeting briefly in chambers with both attorneys, Feldman adjourned the trial until today.
Foote Richardson, 30, already has pleaded guilty to a murder conspiracy charge. She agreed to testify against her husband in hopes of getting a lighter jail sentence, prosecutors have said.
While on the stand, Foote Richardson also sketched her life story, telling the jury of nine women and three men that she met the studious Foote at a Jehovah's Witness convention in 1991.
He was 22 and already working as an accountant at Smith Barney. She was 19 and working as a school assistant at Public School 134 in Queens.
The couple lived at her parents' home, then his, and discussed buying a house in Massapequa, L.I. They had a son, Kevan, now 9.
Then one day in September 1996, she testified, she became "reacquainted" with Richardson, who had just gotten out of jail after serving time for robbery. The two had been friends and lovers in high school.
"I was just curious to see an old friend from school," she told the jury. "Then one thing led to another."
While her husband was in school at night, she and Richardson would rendezvous at hotels and his mother's house.
"I wish you and me were with each other," she quoted Richardson as saying.
Foote was killed as the couple headed for a holiday visit to his wife's cousins in East New York.
While Foote's murder was described at the time as a "senseless, random" act of violence, detectives continued to investigate.
The Richardsons were arrested in March.
Original Publication Date: 1/31/02