A murder mystery with bizarre plot twists involving voodoo and allegations the victim arranged his own death may have an ending: Two men were indicted Wednesday in the shooting five years ago of a Minneapolis pharmacist.

Mark Steven Foster recruited his nephew and a drifter living with Foster to shoot him in the heart so they could reap his life-insurance benefits and so his status as a "high priest" in the Santeria voodoo folk religion would be passed on to the shooter, according to an indictment filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Madison, Wis.

Gregory A. Friesner, 28, of New York City and Foster's nephew, Brent A. Thompson, 29, of Minneapolis each face charges of conspiring to travel from Minnesota to Wisconsin with the intent to commit murder, conspiring to defraud two insurance companies, and carrying a firearm and using it in connection with the murder. The men were not in custody Wednesday and will be summoned to appear in Madison at an undetermined later date, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy O'Shea.

Although the two men were suspects early on, investigators did not have enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury until this year.

"It was just a lengthy, detailed investigation," O'Shea said. None of the investigators with the FBI, Douglas County Sheriff's Department or Minneapolis Police Department would comment about the case.

Foster's ex-wife, Nancy Ruhland of Falcon Heights, has been waiting for a break in the case. The couple divorced in 1993 and she brought their two sons, now ages 11 and 15, to see him regularly. She did not know anything about his voodoo lifestyle, but had a sense that his life was spiraling downward as he was in financial trouble and had strangers moving in and out of his Southeast Minneapolis home every several months.

"Mark could make you feel like someone special. I think somehow he convinced them," she said. "They were adults. They could have said 'no.' They could have tried to steer Mark into some other kind of solution."

According to the indictment, Foster, 45, was in debt after his electronic library business, Quanta Press, failed and under investigation by federal authorities when he decided to end his life violently. In doing so, he would turn over his status as a "high priest" to Friesner, who was his student in Santeria, court papers said. Foster told his small group of voodoo followers that he became a high priest by ritually killing his predecessor and acquiring his soul as well as the souls of a lineage of high priests, the indictment alleges.

Voodoo is a folk religion rooted in African, Roman Catholic and other rituals. It is practiced in various forms in Haiti, Cuba, other parts of the Caribbean and some parts of the United States. Santeria is the Cuban form.

In August 1996, Foster, who worked as a pharmacist with Drug Emporium in St. Paul, took out a $100,000 life-insurance policy with UNUM Life Insurance Company of America. In March 1997, he named as beneficiary his new wife, Sarah L. Phillips-Foster, who was pregnant.

Three months later he applied for another $300,000 policy from State Farm Insurance Co., naming Friesner and Thompson as beneficiaries. Each of them was to receive $50,000.

On July 2, 1997, Foster wrote a letter to his attorney shifting the blame of his death from the defendants to his wife's ex-boyfriends. Three days before his death, Foster wrote his own obituary, describing himself as a social gadfly, bon vivant and philosopher. The afternoon before his death, he made a "goodbye" videotape, later recovered by Minneapolis police at his home.

On July 18, 1997, Foster got his own .44-caliber rifle from a storage locker. Foster, Friesner and Thompson then drove to Douglas County, about 45 miles south of Superior, Wis., and one of them shot him in the chest, according to the federal charges. Foster was found by the side of the road, clothed in ceremonial white.

The death still haunts Foster's former Minneapolis neighbor, Mava Pembleton, who regarded him like a son for the several years he lived next door on 15th Avenue South. Foster often looked after her and her elderly husband, now deceased, and did chores and favors for them.

"He was just so overly good to us," she said. "I often wondered why they never got the man who did this terrible thing to Mark."