Topeka ? A former Emporia church secretary who admitted having her husband killed in 1983, while she was having an affair with the church’s minister, has been denied parole for a fifth time.

Lorna Anderson, 53, has been passed over for parole until next year, Kansas Parole Board Administrator Colene Fischli said Monday.

Anderson pleaded guilty in 1988 to second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Martin, and was sentenced to 15 years to life. She also was convicted in 1984 of soliciting the murders of her husband and the wife of former Emporia minister Tom Bird in an earlier, failed plot.

Bird was released from prison in June 2004, after serving 20 years of a life sentence imposed after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder for killing his wife, Sandra. He also was convicted of solicitation of first-degree murder for the earlier attempt on Martin Anderson’s life.

Anderson’s attorney said his client also should be free.

“There isn’t any justifiable reason I can find for their action,” her attorney, Tom Haney, of Topeka, said of the members of the Kansas Parole Board.

In July 1983, Bird killed his wife, pushed her car over an embankment of a river near Emporia, then placed her body in the car, authorities said.

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. She left the family’s van, dropped her keys and asked her husband to help find them. Martin Anderson was shot by a masked gunman while looking for the keys.

The story was the focus of a 1987 television miniseries, “Murder Ordained.”

In denying Anderson’s parole, Fischli said the parole board noted the serious nature and circumstances of her crimes and objections to her release. Anderson also was denied parole in 1988, 1995, 1998 and 2000.

Haney said his client meets requirements for parole, has passed a psychological evaluation and hasn’t received a disciplinary sanction in prison in more than 16 years.

Haney said officials told him Anderson may be allowed to begin a work-release program in April.

Fischli said Anderson will go before the parole board again in January. The earliest she could be released is Feb. 1, 2007, she said.