Moonda investigator talks of text messages

AKRON (AP) — A woman accused of hiring her lover to kill her wealthy husband expressed her love for him in text messages in the days before and after the shooting two years ago along the Ohio Turnpike, an investigator testified Thursday.

“I’m going to count little Damians until I fall asleep,” Donna Moonda said in a text message to Damian Bradford the night before her husband, Dr. Gulam Moonda, was shot and killed May 13, 2005, said Allan Buxton, an investigator with the state’s Bureau Of Criminal Identification & Investigation.

Moonda, 48, of Hermitage, Pa., faces the death penalty if convicted of hiring Bradford, 25, of Monaca, Pa., to kill her husband for a share of his multimillion dollar estate. Bradford has admitted to the shooting and is expected to be the prosecution’s key witness in the trial.

Bradford will serve a 17 1/2-year prison sentence in exchange for cooperating with authorities. He pleaded guilty last July to interstate stalking and a gun charge.

For more, see Friday's Vindicator and Vindy.com