Wichita ? The husband of a former Emporia church secretary who had her former husband killed in 1983 while she was having an affair with the church’s minister pleaded for his wife’s freedom on Friday.

Lorna Anderson Eldridge Moore, 53, was sentenced to 15 years to life in 1988 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Martin. She also was convicted in 1984 of soliciting the murders of her husband and the wife of former Emporia minister Tom Bird.

Moore is up for parole again after five previous attempts were rejected by the Kansas Parole Board. Her current husband, Terry Moore, told the board Friday that his wife has earned her associate’s degree while in prison, has been a leader in inmate drug treatment programs and is active in a United Methodist women’s group.

Moore’s earliest possible release date is Feb. 1. The Kansas Parole Board will consider her request at a meeting in January.

Moore’s name was Lorna Eldridge when she first was sentenced to prison. She married Randy Eldridge in June 1985, and they divorced in 1990.

In July 1983, Bird killed his wife, pushed her car over an embankment near Emporia, then placed her body in the car, authorities said. Her death was initially ruled an accident.

Four months later, Anderson, her husband and their children pulled to the side of a highway in Geary County after she complained of feeling ill. When she got out of the family’s van, she said she couldn’t find her keys and asked her husband to help find them. Martin Anderson was shot by a masked gunman while looking for the keys. Anderson confessed to her role in the murder plot against her husband and named Tom Bird as the man who killed Martin Anderson. Bird was acquitted of that first-degree murder charge.

The story was the subject of the 1987 television miniseries “Murder Ordained.”