CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio - Tara Lambert wanted the mother of her stepdaughters to die, prosecutors say, and she was willing to pay someone to kill her. And detectives say that Lambert, 33, of Circleville, also told a hit man - who was actually an undercover Franklin County deputy sheriff - that if the woman's current husband was around whenever it happened, to just go ahead and kill him, too. Now, Lambert is on trial in Pickaway County Common Pleas Court on two charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder.

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio � Tara Lambert pulled her Lexus into the Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot, where she met a man and gave him $125 as a down payment for what authorities say was going to be murder.

Lambert�s target was Kellie Cooke, the mother of her two stepdaughters. The conversation with the man she thought was a hired gun � who was really an undercover detective with the sheriff's office � was captured on video.

And it was played for the jury Monday in Pickaway County Common Pleas Court, where Lambert, a 33-year-old model from Circleville, is on trial for two counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. Monday was the first day of the trial.

The second charge comes because, at one point, the undercover detective asked Lambert what he should do if Cooke�s husband was home when he took care of what she had suggested should be made to look like a home-invasion gone wrong.

�He can go, too,� Lambert said on the tape.

Prosecutor Judy Wolford said that Lambert and her husband, Brandon, were in a bitter custody dispute with Cooke last year when Lambert contacted Ginny Cheadle, an old high-school friend, and asked her to threaten Cooke. Cheadle did so over the phone in March.

But in July, Cheadle testified, it escalated.

�Do you know anybody who needs some cash?� Lambert wrote in a private Facebook message to her then. �I want to take care of the problem and take care of the problem for good.�

Cheadle went to the police and, after several recorded phone calls, the meeting was arranged.

Once inside the man's car, Lambert gave him a photo of Cooke, her address and a typed description of her vehicles and her movements. There had been earlier talk of a $1,000 payment.

In the recorded conversation, Lambert giggles and laughs and at one point claps her hands in apparent delight as she discusses what could be done.

�I need her away. Gone,� she said of Cooke. �Just put her in a chopper, you know like one of those lumberjack chopper things.�

Cooke and her husband and about two dozen friends and relatives watched the tape as it was played, many of them sobbing.

Defense attorney James Kingsley said the chopper reference was only a joke. He said that Lambert never said "kill" or "murder," and that she only wanted Cooke "disabled." He said the case is one of entrapment.

�She is a very good-looking woman,� Kingsley said of Lambert. �But she is damaged goods.�

She has a long history of mental illness, he said, and was pressured and led by Cheadle to do more than she ever would have on her own.

�When someone says �Do you want me to cap her?� Tara doesn�t know what that means,� Kingsley said. "She lives in fantasy land.�