The Green Widow focuses on Mary Ellen Samuels, a woman whose lust for money and drugs led her to arrange for the 1988 murder of her husband, a successful Hollywood cameraman. Worried that authorities were catching up to her, she also arranged for the murder of the hit man. Meanwhile, as investigators continued to gather evidence against her, she went on a yearlong, $500,000 shopping spree with the insurance money from her husband’s death. She bought a brand new Porsche and a condo in Cancun, Mexico. With the hit man dead, little forensic evidence, and no eyewitnesses, prosecutors faced an uphill battle in their attempts to secure a double murder conviction against her.