Topeka ? A former church secretary who had an affair with her minister and was then implicated in the deaths of their spouses is being paroled after serving more than two decades in prison.

The case of Lorna Anderson Moore and Thomas Bird inspired a 1987 television miniseries, “Murder Ordained.” Bird went to prison for his wife’s 1983 killing but was released in 2004 and is no longer under state supervision.

Moore had been denied parole five times since entering prison in 1985, including last year. But the Kansas Parole Board voted 3-0 Wednesday to release her, announcing its decision Friday.

She will be released once the Department of Corrections finishes a plan specifying the conditions of her release, board administrator Colene Fischli told The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Those conditions will include where she will live and how often she will be expected to report to a parole officer. KAKE-TV in Wichita reported that she’s expected to live in Hutchinson.

The Bird-Moore case received national attention because it involved an extramarital relationship and had the small-town setting of Emporia, where Bird was a Lutheran pastor. The mix proved irresistible for television, and the miniseries’ two parts were among their weeks’ top 10 programs in the Nielsen ratings.

Sandra Bird died in July 1983 in what at first appeared to be a traffic accident, though a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper who investigated didn’t believe it. Authorities later said Bird killed his wife, pushed her car over an embankment and then placed her body inside.

At the time, Moore was known as Lorna Anderson. Here then-husband, Martin, was shot to death by a masked assailant in November 1983 in Geary County, after he and his wife, traveling with their four young daughters, pulled their van over to the side of a highway.

In 1984, Moore was convicted in Lyon County of soliciting the murders of both her husband and Bird’s wife. Four years later, she pleaded guilty in Geary County to second-degree murder for her role in her husband’s death, and she was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Bird denied killing anyone – and he was acquitted in Geary County on a first-degree murder charge over the death of his lover’s spouse. But he was convicted in 1984 of killing his wife.

He later remarried – as Moore did, twice – and moved to Wyandotte County.

The board’s decision to release Moore came after public hearings in December in Topeka and Wichita.

Her current husband said Moore had earned an associate’s degree while in prison and was active in drug treatment programs for inmates, as well as a Methodist women’s group behind bars.

Starting in April, Moore worked at a small business in the Topeka area as part of a program for inmates, and her employer told the Parole Board that Moore was “the epitome of the perfect employee.”