woman who confessed to shooting a man for $10,000 three decades ago is headed to prison for 20 years to life

Karen Lucille Martin, 53, was sentenced Friday in the death of Leroy Grant, a 36-year-old mechanic and widowed father who was left to die along a Maple Valley road in 1978.The former prostitute confessed to the crime the following year, after a federal prosecutor agreed to give her immunity in exchange for information about contract killings and organized crime.
She told them she killed Grant after hearing from her imprisoned husband that there was a $10,000 contract out for the man's death because he'd "received some money which he was not supposed to have gotten," according to court papers.
She told investigators she lured Grant to meet her, shot him three times and rolled his body down an embankment -- but never got paid.Though she escaped prosecution for years, she didn't get away with the crime because King County prosecutors never promised her immunity. So when a task force looking into unsolved murders and organized crime recently discovered her confession, prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder.Martin, whose criminal record had apparently been limited to a 2002 drunken-driving conviction, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last month.