An Ohio woman is expected to spend the rest of her life behind bars after admitting she ambushed her husband during a custody exchange and injected him with a lethal dose of animal tranquilizer, a killing prosecutors described as calculated, intimate, and brutally methodical.

Amanda Leigh Hovanec, 38, pleaded guilty last month in Auglaize County Court of Common Pleas to one count of aggravated murder in the 2022 death of her husband, Timothy Hovanec, who was 36 at the time.

Court records show the killing unfolded just days after a judge ordered Timothy Hovanec to receive temporary custody of the couple’s three daughters. The order made him the children’s residential and legal custodian for the summer, beginning May 28, 2022.

Federal prosecutors said Amanda Hovanec responded by executing a plan she had already set in motion. During a custody exchange at her home, Timothy Hovanec was unloading car seats when she approached from behind and injected him with M-99, an extremely potent tranquilizer used in zoo and wildlife anesthesia that is roughly 1,000 times stronger than morphine.

The attack was recorded by the victim’s dashcam.

Seconds after the children entered the residence, audio captured Timothy Hovanec saying, “What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me?” followed by pleas for her to get away. Video shows Amanda Hovanec wrestling with him, knocking his phone from his hand, pulling him to the ground, and holding him by the neck until his body went limp and he stopped moving.

Afterward, prosecutors said, she shut off his vehicle, removed his smartwatch, and disabled the dash camera.

The tranquilizer had been shipped to Amanda Hovanec just one month earlier by Anthony Theodorou, a South African citizen with whom she had developed a relationship years earlier while living abroad for her husband’s work with the U.S. State Department. Theodorou later admitted to digging a shallow grave the day before the killing.

With help from Theodorou and her mother, Anita Green, Amanda Hovanec concealed the body. Prosecutors said she placed a plastic bag over her husband’s head and torso because she was concerned about bodily fluids, then loaded his remains into her Honda Pilot.

The next day, Green drove Amanda Hovanec and Theodorou to a pre-dug burial site near farmland once owned by Amanda’s grandfather. The body was buried in a wooded area at the corner of Blank Pike and Wrestle Creek Road in Auglaize County. Green later returned at a predetermined time to pick them up.

According to prosecutors, Amanda Hovanec had told her mother beforehand that she planned to kill her husband — and confirmed afterward that it had been done.

Initially, Amanda Hovanec claimed her husband simply left after dropping off the children. She confessed only after investigators confronted her with the dashcam footage. In a federal affidavit, authorities said she admitted injecting him with what she referred to as “poison,” fully understanding it would kill him within minutes.

Amanda Hovanec is already serving a 40-year federal sentence for multiple crimes tied to the murder, including distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death. During her federal sentencing, she described the killing as the result of her own selfishness.

Under Ohio law, her state conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. A formal sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

Green and Theodorou are awaiting trial on state charges of complicity to aggravated murder. Their pretrial hearing is set for March 13.