Death Row Donna Roberts: Murder was unintended

WARREN — Donna Roberts, on death row for conspiring to kill her ex-husband, says she “never intended” for Robert Fingerhut to end up dead when she complained about him to her boyfriend

“It was my imagination. I’m not a bad person,” the 63-year-old Howland woman told Judge John M. Stuard Monday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Roberts, the only woman on Ohio’s death row, said the communications with boyfriend Nate Jackson before the murder were a product of her creative mind.

“That’s all they were — stories,” she said, explaining that her conversations with Jackson were a lot like writing she did as a youngster. “I never intended for anything like that [the murder] to happen.”

Jackson and Roberts were sentenced to death row in 2002 and 2003, respectively, for killing Fingerhut Dec. 12, 2001, in the Fonderlac Drive, Howland, home Fingerhut shared with Roberts.

For more, see Tuesday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com