Fast-Lane Saga Over: Widow Guilty in Murder of Husband

MIAMI — For 3 1/2 years it has been Miami’s most popular murder mystery, featuring tales of adultery, a squad of professional hit men and a jet-set life style that included snorting cocaine with country singing star Tanya Tucker.

It began March 7, 1986, when millionaire developer Stanley Cohen, 52, was found dead in his bed. He was naked, and he had been shot four times in the head with his own gun. It ended here Thursday when a jury found his 39-year-old widow, Joyce Cohen, guilty of first-degree murder for hiring the hit men, apparently because she feared a divorce would leave her impoverished.

After the verdict was read, Joyce Cohen, dressed in black, showed no emotion. The state is seeking the death penalty. The jury will make its recommendation on Monday.

Right from the start the Cohen murder case made bold headlines. Stanley Cohen, a barrel-chested fitness buff and Joyce, his one-time secretary who became his third wife, lived in a large Coconut Grove coral rock home, and traveled often by private jet.

Joyce Cohen was not charged with murder until October of 1988, more than a year after the alleged hit men were arrested. One of those men, convicted robber Frank Zuccarello, 25, told police that Joyce Cohen had offered him and his partners $100,000 to kill her husband, and had even provided them with a map of the house and shut off the burglar alarm.

Prosecutor Kevin DiGregory portrayed the wife as a woman so bored with her husband that they had not had sex for two years.

Joyce Cohen contended that her husband was killed by mysterious intruders. Weeks after her husband’s death, she passed a lie detector test and called a press conference to announce the results.

The case never strayed far from the public’s attention. One of the most sensational newspaper reports was based on a 46-page transcript of a Miami detective’s interview with Tucker.

Tucker was quoted as saying that the month before the murder she shared some cocaine with Joyce Cohen, who began to confide the details of her failing marriage. The wife was “very upset,” Tucker said, because her husband had a girlfriend whom he had gotten pregnant. “She seemed kind of a pain-wracked person,” Tucker added.