The Dateline episode “The Target” investigates a 2016 murder-for-hire case in a wealthy suburb of Rockland County, New York. Luxury car salesman Marckensy Louissaint was approached by a former client, Kelly Gribeluk, who asked Louissaint to kill her lover’s wife, Susan Bernstein. Her lover was podiatrist Dr. Ira Bernstein. Louissaint went to the police after Gribeluk, a mother of three, approached him. Louissaint agreed to be an informant and pose as the hitman. After nearly two months of meetings with Dr. Bernstein and Gribeluk, the police had enough to arrest both.
Louissaint determined that the plot to kill Bernstein’s wife (to have Susan Bernstein hit by a car) was “50/50,” and that Bernstein had said he didn’t care if his daughter, who has special needs, was with his wife when the hit happened. “Ira is evil,” Susan Bernstein said at her ex-husband’s sentencing in May 2017. The 43-year-old podiatrist received a sentence of five to 15 years in prison; Gribulek, 36, was sentenced to four to 12 years. According to a local source, the two who pleaded guilty to first-degree conspiracy hugged and kissed each other before they walked into the courtroom. After the two made bail, Gribeluk was living with Ira Bernstein. Dateline NBC airs Fridays at 10 pm.
