“First comes love, friendship. She fell head over heels in love with him. Then comes marriage. They were the superstar couple. Then comes cheating. I made you a nurse. I think sex was at the center of a lot of this. There had been a drug issue with Donna. Donna Munda was looking for someone to kill her husband. He’s a good man who’s about to meet a bad end.”
“My name is Steve Sheripa. I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I’ve seen good people turn bad and bad people turn worse. Some took contracts to carry out a hit; some were victims of a hit. To hit men, life and death are just part of the business. It’s nothing personal.”
“May 2005, it’s Friday the 13th, but if everything goes according to plan, Donna Munda thinks it’s going to be the luckiest day of her life.”
“She was always positive, upbeat, bubbly and bouncy, no matter what. But not right now. Donna’s marriage is on the rocks, and today, with the help of her young lover, she’s going to end it with a bang.”
“Gulam Munda is Donna’s older, much older husband. A great guy. People admired him very much for his generosity, for his friendliness, for his openness. Friday the 13th will be Gulam Munda’s worst day on earth. He’ll be dead before sunset. He was kind and generous. He loved and supported his wife. I mean, he stood by her through some real hard times. A perfect husband, the perfect couple. So what happened? How does a loving wife become the monster who has her husband murdered right before her eyes?”
“Gulam Munda, a brilliant doctor, is an immigrant success story.”
“Gulam loves America and its riches. He liked expensive cars and expensive jewelry, watches, custom-made suits. He thought you make enough money, you should spend it too and enjoy it.”
“And the good doctor has an eye for pretty women.”
“If he liked somebody, he was flirt with them and, you know, try to get them out on a date like normally people do. At 43, Gulam Munda meets the woman.”
“Donna Smouse is straight-laced and young, just three years out of high school.”
“Kim Jordan and Debbie Angela are her best friends. We all basically came from middle-class families, Christian families, went to church on Sunday, obeyed our parents, never really got in any trouble in school. Donna comes from a very close-knit family. Many people around here, you go to college, you go somewhere else and work; she came back here, wanted to be in this community.”
“The older doctor and the pretty young ex-cheerleader hit it off, but he is twice her age. When she first started dating Gulam, I remember conversations with her on the phone, and she was very hesitant because she was concerned about the age difference. But Dr. Munda knew how to take care of people. For the next 12 years, he put his young Donna through nursing school and then he funded a master’s degree. Donna became a nurse anesthetist, top of the line. All the while, Gulam and Donna got closer and closer.”
“I know she fell head over heels in love with him, even though she was reluctant initially to get together with him.”
“Gulam’s friends think Donna is great and beauty, sure. Sparkle up to dinners with his Indian doctor pals, Sacha and Chhatta. They did seem to fit well together as a couple. At meetings or parties, you know, make sure and say hello to everybody and comment on people’s outfits and how nice they are, and so people used to like that. She was fairly outgoing; she was a very likable woman. I kept telling him, ‘Why don’t you get married? You should get married. It is time. You’re getting old. You should settle down.’ Then finally he agreed. By that time, they knew each other for a long time, and his wedding was held in my house.”
“When they married, Donna is 30, Gulam 54. She moves into his dream house. Life is good. Everyone cheers. We’re a small community, so say anybody is a superstar couple, but they were as close as you would get.”
“Like a lot of people who make it to the top, Gulam Munda started at the bottom. He was born poor in India. He used to say that there were times when there was not even enough food in the house, and he used to get by with one meal a day so that his sister could eat. But Gulam managed to become a doctor, and when he was 34, he came to America for advanced training in urology, a very demanding medical discipline. He settles in Hermitage, Pennsylvania, a peaceful, family-oriented small town.”
“Years ago, immigrants flooded into this area to work the steel mills. Today, the mills are gone. The growth industry now is medicine, perfect for a new kind of immigrant. When he moved in here, you know, I don’t believe there are any other urologists in town, which is maybe the reason that he came. So he worked up very quickly a very large patient base, so he knew lots and lots of people in this community.”
“As a doctor, Gulam is a true humanitarian. ‘Thank you very much. Things are going good so far. Awesome.’ Honestly, you cannot describe the way he was to his patients. I think he always treated them like his own family.”
“Kind-hearted and bar all in simple terms, very sincere. That’s your urinary tract, right? Sometimes you get some little polyps.”
“Gulam knows his patients’ lives, even in a rich country, can be hard. ‘It’s just push it down.’ In Hermitage, Gulam Munda is welcomed, honored and loved.”
“He supported his patients, you know. He wanted them to take a certain medication, and they just decided they couldn’t afford it. It was common that he would order it and he would pay for it himself to make sure everybody was taken care of. Until the last chapter, Gulam Munda’s life story would have made a wonderful lesson about hard work and sacrifice paying off. Life in Hermitage was a dream come true.”
“Donna and Gulam Munda are pillars of the community. Beautiful as she is, Donna’s no pampered trophy. She has a full-time medical career of her own as a nurse anesthetist. Donna works hard, but it is a tough, draining, stressful life. ‘Do something for the pain, okay?’ Then tragically, she loses her dad, her main emotional support. It’s a shattering blow. When he died, she was inconsolable.”
“It still makes me emotional because I know that her entire life changed from that point on. She went into such a severe depression that she pulled back from all of us.”
“The person Donna’s friends know so well is about to become a stranger. Almost like her spark died when her dad did. It seems the death of Donna’s dad was what triggered her downward spiral. It would take Donna into a world of addiction and send her husband to his untimely death. What was it that turned her from a woman who was a hardworking local girl? How did she make that leap to actually want to kill him?”
“Gulam Munda thinks he’s off on a wonderful family adventure. He isn’t. His wife Donna has a terrible surprise waiting for him. She’s taking her unwitting husband to his death at the hands of her hitman lover. Very strange behavior for someone who has made a career of saving lives. With her stressful job and the father she was so close to no longer there, Donna is emotionally adrift. She’s in a sea of pain, and she’s sinking fast. She needs somebody to rescue her, but the man who had nurtured her for all these years seems remote, oblivious, absent.”
“She was in a severe state of depression, and she started to fall into needing to hear the positive things, needing herself to be built up again. In the household of the Hermitage, Pennsylvania star couple, the bloom is off the rose. Donna has hit 40; Gulam’s in his 60s. She needs energy and excitement to get her out of a rut, but he just doesn’t seem up for it. Her relationship with Gulam had turned a little bit cold.”
“Their intimate life was not what it had been because of some physical problems Gulam had.”
“For a time, Donna’s work is all-consuming. She can forget her emotional problems, at least for a while. ‘Come on, clear. Then everything going on in her life overwhelms her. Claire, stay with us, honey. You can do it. Claire.’ Donna’s job is to ease her patients’ physical pain, but Donna is hurting too. In her case, it’s mostly heartache. The drugs that ease physical pain can treat that too. On top of all the obvious hazards nurses face, there’s one that’s kind of a secret. It’s, how do I put this? You’re working with a lot of people who are suffering; they lean on you. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life, they need you to forget yourself and focus on their pain. Because a few drops of what you got in your pocket will make the pain go away. And when you’re in the middle of it, tired, your back and your heart hurting, these little vials tempt you. You say, ‘Okay, fair is fair, I’ll share your pain.’ If you share your painkiller, fair is fair.”
“Nobody knows how many doctors and nurses use drugs meant for patients, but there are many, and Donna Munda was one of them.”
“Donna was into fentanyl. It’s a favorite amongst professionals. Wickedly powerful, but it doesn’t show up on a drug test. Fentanyl is more addictive than morphine and 100 times more potent. A few drops are all you need. ‘I’m going to give you something for the pain, okay?’ A little misdirection and you’re good to go. Nobody can tell if the patient gets every drop. ‘It’ll all be better soon, dear.'”
“Or if you save a few for a rainy day, and Donna has been facing stormy weather for a while now.”
“I think things just spiraled out of control for her. She did make some bad choices when it came to the pain medication.”
“At home, Gulam is the eternal optimist. The marriage is not going well, but he tries to keep it on track. ‘Welcome home, darling. How you doing? How was your day at work?’ Trouble is, he and Donna aren’t on the same page anymore. I think there’s still this tendency to look at Donna as the young girl, even though they’ve been married for 20 years. You know, you still have that age difference; the older man being somewhat paternalistic in a way. Not even her best friends know what’s really going on. She kind of went into isolation; she pulled back. She didn’t answer phones, and I think one thing led into another at a very low point in her life.”
“Um, I guess partly too, I’m emotional because I wish I had known more of what was going on so I could have been more of a support to her. She essentially lived a double life. Her family members knew of her as a loving sister and daughter, but she had this other side; she had this drug problem.”
“Now, this one here, while Donna has pulled back from her old pals, she and Gulam keep seeing his. With them, she plays the perfect wife perfectly. She seemed very happy, and I used to have a good time and didn’t have any specific problem that she felt uncomfortable, or we felt uncomfortable. He never said anything bad which could make me think that there is a problem.”
“But of course, there’s a huge problem, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Just because fentanyl is easy to steal doesn’t mean nobody’s keeping track.”
“Donna gets caught. It’s her first offense, so Donna just gets probation and rehab, and she gets fired. But that’s on the QT. Her drug charges weren’t really well-publicized because she never pleaded guilty or went to trial or anything like that. Gulam and Donna do an amazing job of keeping her trouble secret.”
“She kept things very much to herself. Her husband kept things very much to himself. I mean, he was a private person. I guess that’s what he figured out, that it’s a private matter between me and my wife. Always being a very private person, I think on one hand, she would not be comfortable with calling us and saying, ‘Hey, I have this problem, you know? I need help or I’m seeking help.'”
“At 42, after studying and working her whole adult life, Donna is an unemployed drug addict with no access to the narcotic her body is screaming for. She was just emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually crushed, and I don’t think she knew quite what to do or where to turn. She can’t turn to Gulam; he’s angry and doesn’t understand.”
“Donna is now being forced to take a different path. It’s rehab or back to court. If you have to go into rehab, you’ve probably screwed up your life; that’s what they call a given. You’ve messed up at work, your family and friends are fed up. Part of the recovery deal is taking responsibility. Detox is hell, but it’s nothing compared to the emotional stuff. So instead of changing themselves, a lot of people just look for a new escape. Donna finds one: a new friend. His name is Damian Bradford. Together, they’ll be extremely bad news for Dr. Gulam Munda.”
“Donna Munda has been through the worst her world can dish out, and she’s come out smiling. She feels like she’s got a new reason to live, but that reason is the joy she feels in the arms of a young drug dealer, Damian Bradford, Donna’s new boy toy. It’s in Damian’s bed that Donna hatches a plot to rid her life of the one thing keeping her from total happiness: her husband. She’s figured the best way to move on with her life is to end his. And to think it all began in rehab. When she went to rehab, she was done up to the hilt. I mean, makeup, jewelry, clothes, the whole nine yards.”
“She wasn’t dressed like your stereotypical—and I’m not saying anything derogatory about rehab, but people have a stereotype.”
“Donna draws the attention of a fellow rehabber.”
“‘What’s up everyone, my name is Damian Bradford, and I’ve been a bad boy, you know? Hopefully I can take something away from here when I leave.'”
“Damian Bradford is 23, cocaine dealer, cocaine user, a bad boy with a gun. He liked steroids and had a good way with the ladies. He had some brushes with the law, drugs of course, assault weapons, and he was on parole. Damian was hardcore for small-town Pennsylvania, which meant he could still be fairly pleasant.”
“He was very well-groomed, muscular, very polite, very respectful. He was a smooth talker. He was a very nice guy.”
“He sure looks fine to Donna. She hasn’t had this kind of male attention in a while.”
“Damian, being an attractive muscular male, caught her attention, and I think her appearance caught his attention. I’m sure Damian wasn’t thinking, ‘Hey, this could be some type of long-term thing.’ I’m sure Damian was thinking, ‘Hey, she’s attractive, she dresses well. Maybe something could happen short-term here.'”
“Okay, exchanging glances is one thing, but acting on them is another. Anybody who knows anybody who’s been in rehab knows that rehab romances, while frowned upon, they flourish. If you’re a recovering addict, you’re vulnerable. Being off drugs leaves a big empty hole; you got to fill it with something. Your addiction says, ‘All right, I can’t have drugs. Give me something I could work with, something pleasurable.'”
“When they got physically involved, it was secret and you had that type of chemistry, that type of excitement.”
“I mean, it was a cheating relationship with all the excitement and everything to go with it. Donna tells Gulam, ‘Rehab is really working for her; she feels like a new woman.’ Maybe the sense of danger adds to the thrill.”
“When Donna and Damian hooked up, he was sharing an apartment with a roommate, so to make sure she could see him whenever she needed a Damian fix, Donna found him his own place and she paid the rent. His part of the bargain, I think you got the picture by now.”
“She took care of Damian. She would give him clothes, money.”
“He was, for all intents and purposes, what they call a kept man. You have a woman that’s paying all the bills, a woman that seems to have a healthy appetite. Who in their right mind would walk away from that? I mean really, it sounds to me like a middle-aged person who meets a young person: a new beginning.”
“Donna was hooked again, another full-blown, all-consuming addiction. If she wasn’t with Damian, she was on the phone or texting him. A woman obsessed.”
“They talked to each other at least 40 times a day, either by phone or text messaging. He called her baby girl, and she called him Daddy. Seems kind of far-fetched for a middle-aged woman to be speaking like that, but that’s what happened. Together, Donna and Damian called themselves the ‘Double D’s’. She was at a very low point in her life, and this person probably gave her attention to make her feel that she was important, and I think she kind of just slid right into that because I’m sure he made her feel special. Her and Damian seemed totally obsessed with each other.”
“As she falls hard for Damian, living with Gulam becomes impossible.”
“Their relationship was starting to crack.”
“She’s starting to call her relationship with Gulam an intolerable situation. She refers to Gulam as the prison guard watching her. Gulam has all the money; Gulam has the power. ‘I made you a nurse.'”
“What she tells Damian is that Gulam is cruel.”
“She indicated that he was abusive to Donna Munda. He was controlling, that both physically and mentally abusive. Basically, a portrait you would paint to someone for the purpose of making that someone dislike your spouse.”
“Damian started getting feelings for her, real genuine feelings for her, but Damian’s having relationship issues of his own. Remember how pre-Donna, Damian was sharing an apartment? Her name is Charlene; she isn’t happy about the Double D’s, so she drops a bomb.”
“‘Hi, may I speak with Dr. Munda please?'”
“Turns out Damian’s ex-roommate considers herself his fiancée.”
“Charlene McFraasier, who was Damian’s girlfriend, called Dr. Munda and told him about the affair.”
“‘But I have some very interesting information about your wife, cuz she doesn’t want to lose Damian to this wealthy older woman.’ Yeah, it’s been happening for months now. The cat was out of the bag, and it came out scratching. Donna’s marriage hit the rocks hard, and it turned out that Gulam, generous as he was, was also prudent. He took some precautions against a change in the marriage weather way back when he got Donna to sign a prenup. If they split, she’d get a quarter-million, no more. But now Gulam was worth about 25 times that much: 6 million and change, to be exact.”
“Gulam’s hurt, but he’s not vengeful. If Donna wants out, he’ll let her go. He even offers her way more than the prenup just to make it quick and easy.”
“I’m grateful. Dr. Munda apparently offered Donna a million dollars to walk out of the marriage. Donna refuses.”
“She wants out, all right, but she wants a golden parachute too.”
“Dr. Munda’s medical practice had made him one of the richest guys in Hermitage, PA, but Donna had discovered the money was nearly all his. That prenup was the problem, but it only kicked in if the Mundas divorced. There was a way Donna figured to get her fair share, to get out of her marriage, to make her lover happy and totally attached. And Gulam was old, I mean nearly 70. Donna figured he didn’t have long to live anyway. Why not just speed things up a bit?”
“Damian thinks of himself as a bad boy, but what’s going down now is way worse than bad.”
“Donna told Damian that she wanted him to kill Dr. Munda. She promised him half of what she would get out of the doctor’s multi-million-dollar estate.”
“Damian Bradford had a female throwing money at him, giving Damian a lifestyle he had never experienced before, and she convinced him that she would be receiving millions after the inheritance came in. He’s in that ‘I want to please you’ stage. It’s a bad combination.”
“Damian agrees. Gulam’s got to go. Donna’s plan sounds simple. The idea is to make killing him look like a random drive-by. She had told Damian Bradford that her husband goes to a mosque on a regular basis, and he went there under her direction.”
“Donna gave him a map, gave him the route. He had his 9mm handgun.”
“Damian followed the doctor to the mosque and sat outside the mosque in his car.”
“Damian was talking to Donna by cell phone during this whole thing, waiting for a chance to shoot him, and he was going to basically kill him on the street.”
“Damian Bradford is sitting outside Gulam Munda’s mosque, waiting for a chance to shoot him. He spends the time talking to coach Donna, who offers encouragement and friendly advice.”
“But Damian doesn’t get a chance to pull the trigger.”
“Apparently, there was no clear shot available. There just never seemed to be the right opportunity. The situation just never felt right.”
“So Damian follows Gulam back to his office.”
“He never tried to assassinate the doctor. At that point, Damian believed it was not a good place or time.”
“So the mosque plan is a bust, but Damian has another idea. He went back to the house to see Donna Munda.”
“Damian said, ‘Why don’t we just do it right here when Doctor comes home that very night?’ And Donna said, ‘No, but we’re going to Toledo pretty soon. We’ll set something up then.'”
“Donna and her mother and Dr. Munda were planning on a car trip to Toledo, Ohio, to look at a house that Dr. Munda’s nephew was interested in buying. Donna had established this is the opportunity when Damian could kill Dr. Munda.”
“All the time Donna Munda was plotting her husband’s murder, she played the role of the happy wife at home and in public. And even though Gulam knew about his wife’s affair with Damian, he never let the facade of happy contentment drop, not even to their closest friends.”
“And we went to dinner, some crab house. There was not any hint of any discord or fights or anything like that. They seemed fairly happy.”
“Maybe Donna seems fine because she thinks all her troubles will soon be over. Talking to my Daddy. Every tick of the clock brings closer the moment when she and Damian will be together, rich and free.”
“They go over this scheme one last time.”
“They met earlier in the day. She gave him directions to Toledo where they were going, then they separated.”
“Donna and Damian now have a plan they’re convinced will work: an ambush disguised to look like a robbery. It’s all set up. The plan’s got some flaws, which is why we know about it, but Baby Girl and Daddy, they think they got a winner.”
“The night before the trip, Donna and Damian text furiously back and forth like always. She tells him she’ll fall asleep counting little Damians. Aw, isn’t that sweet?”
“May 2005, it’s Friday the 13th.”
“Damian is dressed all in black, dressed in a hoodie over his head, has a baseball cap on, a black shirt, pants, the whole nine yards.”
“Damian sits in wait at a general store near the Munda house.”
“She sent some text messages that seem innocuous enough but were signals that they were leaving.”
“Damian watches the three of them leave and starts following them. The Mundas are on their way to Ohio. Donna has invited her mother, Dorothy, along for the trip. Nice touch. What kind of monster would have her husband murdered in front of her elderly mother, right?”
“Besides, Donna knew her mom was fond of the guy who put her girl through school. This would be the last chance to spend some quality time together.”
“Donna and Damian haven’t planned out a location for the hit. At some point, the Munda’s Jag will just pull off the road and Damian will have to wing it.”
“At first, Gulam’s at the wheel. About an hour in, he makes a stop.”
“A crowded service plaza is no place for a hit, but the stop does give Donna a chance to take over driving. When they came out, she wanted to drive and convinced Dr. Munda to let her drive the vehicle.”
“When they get out of the rest area, Damian follows them.”
“And they drive for about 20 minutes, and it was very sad and tragic for Gulam, and to me, senseless. Very senseless. I mean, they could have worked something out. She could have walked away with money. A million bucks is a lot of money, no matter what.”
“Her intentions, Donna was certainly not a hardened criminal by any stretch. Donna Munda pretended she had some stomach virus or she was nauseous. She pulled off. Damian sped up, got right behind the vehicle within a couple car lengths. The plan was when she pulled off, that meant for Damian to pull off and to execute the plan.”
“What Donna and Damian have plotted for months is finally going down.”
“Dr. Munda was on his way out of the vehicle.”
“Get back! Get back in the car!”
“Damian at gunpoint ordered him back in the vehicle, demanded Dr. Munda’s wallet. Gulam was very scared; there was fear in his face. He did not resist in any way, shape, or form. I just followed orders, gave him his wallet with about $3,000 in it in cash. Gulam Munda always carries a big wad of cash. He’s told his pals it’s his survival plan. Anyone who mugs him will go away happy.”
“The mugger will be happy, but Gulam will be dead.”
“Mrs. Smouse is in the back seat behind the doctor. Donna is in the driver’s seat. Damian basically just puts the gun to the side of his head, then fires.”
“‘Oh God! Oh God!'”
“Donna is a nurse; she acts the part of the emergency specialist.”
“Donna is doing CPR on the doctor. Dr. Munda is dead for all intents and purposes probably as soon as the bullet hit him. The bullet hits him right up here. Didn’t have a chance.”
“Damian Bradford is long gone. He tosses the gun and hightails it back to Pennsylvania.”
“She was setting up her husband for nothing but money, having her own mother witness the crime. It was just horrible, horrible.”
“When the cops get there, Donna tells them what she saw. It’s a pile of bull designed to mislead them. The guy, she says, was short, he had a mean voice, and he was driving a minivan. ‘I don’t know, I reached into my purse, I gave him—'”
“Donna tells the state police that she can’t see the gunman’s face because he has a ski mask kind of thing over his face.”
“Donna’s story was she couldn’t even tell what race the killer was. Thing is, Donna’s mother, Dorothy, could. She told the cops the shooter was an African-American. It’s not the only place Dorothy and Donna’s story diverge, something that should set an investigator’s antenna quivering.”
“‘We pulled over, and we pulled over because Gulam wanted to drive.'”
“‘And then this—'”
“Dorothy tells police Donna decided to pull off the road. Donna says it was her husband’s idea. Sure, it’s a detail. That’s where the devil is, right in the details.”
“‘Got out of the car, and I ran around, and I started to give him CPR.’ That was just one of the things that didn’t add up. The biggest was that people just don’t get robbed and murdered on the sides of turnpikes. Not since Interstate 80 was a stagecoach route, anyway. Maybe the ‘Double D’s’ had been watching the wrong kind of shoot-’em-ups.”
“There were other weird things. Why did the highwaymen just shoot one of them? It just wasn’t adding up. A few days later, Donna makes a public plea for help.”
“Please, if anybody knows anything, please help us. That’s all I’m asking. My husband was such a good man. He was a kind, loving person. He was a wonderful husband. He did not deserve this.”
“Actually, the cops are pretty sure Donna is involved, but they need more than a bad feeling to hang a murder rap on a grieving widow.”
“The break comes a week later. The cops get an anonymous call from someone who’s sure Donna is dirty. Yep, Charlene’s back.”
“‘Hi, I have some information.'”
“Charlene calls the state police, tells them about Donna. ‘Rather not give that out.’ She doesn’t tell the police who she is, but you know, they figure that out pretty quick. ‘I have information about a murder that happened on the highway.’ Tells them where Damian lives, the whole nine yards.”
“Charlene got the ball rolling. Actually, Charlene wants to sink Donna, but investigators link Donna to Damian, and he’s the one who gets snagged. The cops hit Damian’s apartment. It’s big news.”
“Investigators obtained the search warrant because they say Bradford is a person of interest in the shooting death of Dr. Gulam Munda. The evidence in his apartment: bloody clothes, cell phone bills, and Gulam’s money.”
“Is more than enough to bring him in. Damian knows that Donna’s got his back just like she promised. He was counting on her to testify that it wasn’t him. She was his star witness. They had the text messages. They weren’t going to deny the affair. The affair was what it was.”
“While Damian sits in jail, the cops keep building their case. In a bit of a technical coup, they actually map out exactly where Donna and Damian’s cell phones were in the hours leading up to the hit.”
“Damian’s only chance is that his baby girl will rescue her daddy.”
“So Damian had to hope that Donna was going to stick to the plan and testify on his behalf and say it wasn’t him. But she chose not to testify. Damian took that as a message of every man for himself.”
“So Damian cut a deal. He admitted to killing Gulam Munda, and he agreed to testify against Donna when she went to trial. Damian was the prosecution’s star witness, and as you can imagine, the media went ballistic.”
“There was a lot of interest in this case from the get-go because it had everything. I mean, it had sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There was a lot of questions of, you know, ‘What’s going on here?’ And it was very, very far leap to go from, ‘All right, so they’re not getting along very well,’ to her actually wanting him dead. Uh, people are still grappling with that question. You know, I don’t know that there’s an answer to it.”
“To our eyes, at least from my personal perspective, I mean I had, if anybody asked me at that time, I would say they’re crazy to even mention it or even think of it, that she was anyway involved in that.”
“Till that day, we were giving her benefit of doubt. We were very sympathetic. Then it turned into a complete hit.”
“The verdict: Donna Munda is guilty. Donna got life without parole. Thanks to his plea deal, Damian Bradford got 17 and a half years. If she’s still interested, Charlene could have him back in 2022.”
“Donna had it all: millionaire’s wife, family, friends. She lost it all. She has nothing. She has no money. She’s in jail for the rest of her life. The Donna that I’ve always known and loved and still know and love to this day and keep in touch with, it would be unfathomable for me to think that she could have ever masterminded or planned anything that would harm Gulam in any way. And he was a dear friend like my brother, you know. And so I really miss him deeply, you know. So very senseless for what? Who gained anything? Nobody won.”
“It’s never made sense to anybody but Donna and Damian. There was another path less traveled by, but people take it every day. Donna and Damian were on the road to recovery; they got turned around. They had their eyes on the wrong prize. They might recover from their addictions; maybe they already have. But Gulam Munda never will. He never even had the chance to understand what was happening to him. It was just a senseless crime.”
