Reading between the lines

A Pennsylvania urologist was killed last weekend, in an apparently random robbery on the Ohio Turnpike. 69 year old Gulam Moonda was shot in the head after surrendering money to a robber who had pulled up behind his Jaguar as he and his wife switched drivers.

From the start, this case seemed a bit unusual. Why Moonda? Armed robberies are not common along the turnpike, particularly in broad daylight. How did a van happen to pull up behind them when they stopped along the road, not at a rest stop? Why did the robber shoot when Moonda had already given him money? Why did he leave Moonda's wife and mother-in-law alone?

On the news this week, I saw Moonda's wife who is much younger (45) and attractive. From this article we learn that Moonda's wife was driving and that she had recently gotten out of drug rehab (she is a nurse anesthetist who is/was addicted to fentanyl).

My guess is something like this
1. The wife has a lover and they want to get on with their life, but with the money she'll get when Moonda dies
2. They set up a trip and bring the mother-in-law along as a witness
3. The lover (or hired killer) follows in the van
4. At a prearranged spot the wife pulls over, saying she wants him to drive
5. Van pulls up, goes through "robbing" Moonda, then shoots him.

Pretty neat set-up. The initial crime looks like a robbery gone bad and the mother-in-law is a credible witness that it really was a robbery (if it had just been the wife, people might have doubted her story).