After Ira Bernstein got out of jail for plotting to kill his estranged wife, he allegedly tried to order another hit on her
The story of Ira Bernstein once drew widespread attention after allegations surfaced that he attempted to arrange the killing of his estranged wife not once, but twice. The shocking accusations quickly turned the case into a headline-making legal drama that captured public interest.
In 2016, Bernstein and his mistress, Kelly Gribeluk, met with a car salesman and agreed to pay him $100,000 to hire a hitman to kill his then-wife, Susan Bernstein, according to the Journal News. However, their plans were foiled when the salesman contacted police and cooperated with them to trap Bernstein and Gribeluk by recording their conversations.
Bernstein and Gribeluk were arrested in May 2016, and they both pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the attempted hit by January 2017. Bernstein was sentenced to five to 15 years, and he was released in 2021. Meanwhile, Gribeluk received a sentence of four to 12 years in prison and was also released in 2021.
Susan spoke at her estranged husband’s sentencing and called him an “evil and cold-hearted narcissist,” according to the Rockland County Times.
A little more than one year after he returned home, prosecutors alleged that he plotted to have Susan killed a second time. Bernstein was indicted in May 2023 on charges of evidence tampering in connection with the alleged second plot. Prosecutors claimed that Bernstein spoke with a former colleague about trying to have Susan killed, and he tried to have the recorder that captured the conversation destroyed.
Bernstein’s 2015 crimes were originally covered in the 2017 Dateline episode, “The Target,” in which both he and Gribeluk participated. As a result of his second alleged attempt, Dateline picked the story up for a second time in the episode “Take Two,” which aired on March 13.
Here’s everything to know about where Ira Bernstein is now, after allegedly plotting to kill his now ex-wife, twice.
Who is Ira Bernstein?
Bernstein is a former successful podiatrist who owned Rockland Podiatry in Rockland County, N.Y. He met his future wife, Susan, at a fraternity party at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s, according to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, via Oxygen.
The couple went on to get married and eventually welcomed three children together. When Bernstein attended medical school, Susan stood by him and raised their kids.
“She was just so caring and compassionate,” he told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. “She was supportive of me. She was there when I had to study for long hours.”
After graduating, Bernstein opened a group of podiatry centers across the county and bought a sprawling home for his family. However, Bernstein and Susan’s marriage started to fracture. He claimed that she was spending too much money, while she accused him of domestic violence, per ABC.
In the height of his marital woes, Bernstein started having an affair with Gribeluk, a former mortician who had been one of his patients. Bernstein and Gribeluk, who was in the midst of a tumultuous separation, bonded over their marital woes.
“He started opening up to me about his separation and we had shared some intimate things and that we were going through very similar things,” Gribeluk said on Dateline in 2017.
Susan became aware of their affair and filed for divorce in 2014, per the Supreme Court of New York. Bernstein alleged on Dateline that he and Susan tried to have an open marriage for some time, but she later filed a restraining order against him citing physical and verbal abuse. Susan eventually dropped the restraining order but went forward with a second filing for divorce in 2016.
When did Bernstein attempt to have his wife killed?
Amid Bernstein’s marital problems, he was explaining to Gribeluk that the stress — both financially and emotionally — was taxing him, Gribeluk said in the 2017 Dateline episode. Instead of going through with the divorce, Bernstein and Gribeluk came up with a plan to have Susan killed.
In early 2016, Gribeluk met with a friend and car salesman, Marckensy Louissaint, and asked if he could find them a hitman to kill Susan. Louissaint later clarified to Dateline that he never insinuated to Gribeluk that he knew a hitman, but he decided to pretend to know what she was talking about.
Shortly after he met with Gribeluk, Louissaint contacted the police. Authorities convinced him to go undercover and get Gribeluk and Bernstein to ask him for a hitman on camera. They filled his car with several hidden video cameras and microphones to get a confession.
Louissaint subsequently met with both Gribeluk and Bernstein several times and they made it clear what they were asking him to do. In one of the meetings, Gribeluk specified the manner of death and said, “It can’t be a robbery. It can’t be a shooting. It can’t be anything like that.”
“What about like a — either a hit and run, like, when she’s getting out of the car, or, like, plain an accident. Somebody backed into her, and the guy stays and says, ‘I didn’t see her.’ You know, it’s plain an accident, so there’s no investigation,” Gribeluk said in another meeting.
Authorities later alleged that Gribeluk and Bernstein even negotiated the hit to a price of $100,000 and set up a date with Louissaint.
Police arrested Gribeluk and Bernstein in May 2016 and charged them with felony counts of second-degree conspiracy, second-degree solicitation and fourth-degree conspiracy and a misdemeanor count of fourth-degree solicitation, the Journal News reported at the time.
“This is all about a conspiracy to commit murder. It was basically a despicable plan to take the life of a wife and a mother and it appears to be for financial gain,” Thomas Zugibe, Rockland County District Attorney, said in a press release at the time, per ABC.
Despite their arrests, Bernstein and Gribeluk maintained to Dateline that they changed their minds and didn’t actually plan on hiring the hitman. Less than a year after their arrests, Bernstein and Gribeluk pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in the second degree and two counts of conspiracy in the fifth degree, per the Rockland County District Attorney.
Bernstein was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison, while Gribeluk received a four to 12 year prison sentence.
Did Bernstein try to hire a second hit on his ex-wife?
Bernstein served four years in prison and was released on July 1, 2021, per the Rockland County DA’s office.
Around one year after his release, Bernstein allegedly believed that he was about to be exposed for plotting a second hit against his ex-wife. Prosecutors claimed that around August and September 2022, Bernstein tried to destroy a tape that would incriminate him.
Prosecutors alleged that Bernstein met up with a landscaper about potentially hiring a second hit on his wife. The landscaper subsequently contacted authorities and alleged that he recorded the conversation as a way to get out of a civil lawsuit with Bernstein’s father, per the Journal News.
This time around, Bernstein was indicted on charges of tampering with physical evidence, per the Rockland County DA’s office. His sister, Jaclyn Goldberg, was also charged in connection to the conspiracy to try and destroy the tape.
Where is Bernstein now?
In August 2025, Bernstein pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence. His attorney claimed that while Bernstein had participated in the conversation, it was set up by the landscaper, and there was “no solicitation” of a crime.
Bernstein was sentenced to one one-and-a-half to three years in state prison on March 6, 2026. Ahead of the sentencing, Susan — who has since been granted a divorce and now runs a divorce coaching business — spoke about the second alleged attempt on her life.
“Ira repeatedly said it was cheaper to have me killed than divorce me,” Susan alleged, per the Journal News. “He did not learn a single thing. The possibility of yet another murder attempt is not speculative.”
While they were out on bail in 2017, Bernstein and Gribeluk shared their sides of the story on an episode of Dateline. Their interviews made a reappearance in the Dateline episode “Take Two,” which documented the newest updates in the alleged second plot. Dateline “Take Two” aired on NBC on March 13.
