SOFIA, Bulgaria — A former Mrs. Bulgaria has been sentenced to three years in prison for the strangulation death of her bodybuilder husband during a bondage session gone wrong.

Anita Meyzer, 52, pleaded guilty in Varna Regional Court to negligence in the Aug. 14 death of her much-younger husband, Nikolai Dimov, and for trying to pay a cop $32,000 to hush up the accidental slaying, according to Bulgarian news site News.bg.

According to testimony, Meyzer had wrapped plastic zip ties around her 40-year-old husband’s arms, legs and neck as part of a bondage fantasy gone awry.

She had told police that Dimov had asked her to film him using his muscles to break free from the restraints as a feat of strength. But prosecutors said no such tape was ever found.

“He had sometimes strange desires that I, as his wife, had to satisfy. My mistake was that I did not tell his mother and his sister what was up so maybe so that maybe they could have stopped him,” she told the court.

Initially, Meyzer had told cops that she had gone out shopping and had returned to find her husband dead on a massage table, but later admitted her role in his death. She had also made efforts to dispose of the plastic ties that had been used.

When told she would be charged, Meyzer tried to pay investigators to keep her role in her husband’s death silent. When she was finally detained, police say they found several thousand dollars in her handbag and her U.S. passport (she holds dual Bulgarian and U.S. citizenship), leading them to believe she had plans to flee Bulgaria.

Meyzer was already a notorious figure in her country, having shown up to compete as Mrs. Bulgaria in the 2014 Mrs. World competition in Maryland, even though she had not won any beauty pageants at home that would have qualified her to do so.