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Full disclosure: I know a little something about the primal urges behind wanting an ex-husband dead.

I get it, but in the figurative, bloodless, harmless, Kim Basinger-type way that goes no further than a slammed phone or acerbic glance. Trust me.

Patricia Long had those urges, too, but her burgeoning mental illness likely forced her death wish to spill madly, desperately beyond any glance and onto a mercenary Web page. In early 2004, she posted a want ad for a hired gun willing to knock off her ex "for the fun of it or for practice."

The Albuquerque mother of three, school teacher and Phi Beta Kappa college grad could pay $140 up front, maybe $185 more, with the promise of a cut from the $250,000 from her ex's life insurance policy - a policy she hadn't known she was no longer a beneficiary to.

"Smother him," she told the prospective hit man on Feb. 6, 2004.

She had suffered, she told him. Her ex had made her sick. She had post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I've been hurt so badly by him that I can't take it anymore," she told him, her voice meek and girlish and oddly detached. "It's not fair what he's gotten away with."

But she didn't get away with it.

The hit man, as it turned out, was a Bernalillo County sheriff's detective with a wire.

After her arrest that night, detectives learned she had a second hit man lined up. They learned she had thought seriously about killing her ex since their bitter divorce 16 months earlier - in spite of remarrying. That turbulent union also ended in divorce two months after her arrest.

Long pleaded guilty to criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced in March 2005 to three years in prison, minus 394 days for time already served.

"We thought we had our best chance at salvation if she was sent to prison and ordered into treatment for mental illness," said Albuquerque accountant Stephen Avery, the ex-husband Long wanted gone.

But whether Long received treatment is anyone's guess. Such information is confidential, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tia Bland said.

Two weeks ago, Long, 40, was released from the Women's Correctional Facility in Grants and entered an undisclosed program where she will remain for up to 30 days, Bland said.

"What I can tell you is that it is a health-related program," Bland said. "She is not on the streets. She will not wind up on his doorsteps."

Avery is not convinced.

"There's a line we have to walk between confidentiality and protection of society," he said. "We've got an unstable woman out there who wanted me dead."

After Long is released from the mystery program, she will remain on probation, Bland said. Because of what she called "extraordinary circumstances," Bland said the department is also assisting her in finding a place to live.

"It's been difficult," she said.

Avery said that, with such murky information, it's hard to know just how safe he and his children are from the woman who once called him a monster.

"I'll know she is better when she takes responsibility for what she has done," he said.

Jean McCray, Long's attorney, had told the court back in 2004 that the blame in a 16-year marriage that went so far wrong was not entirely Long's.

"Certainly, there were two sides to that divorce story that went on for a period of time, and I think that both parties were, to put it mildly, not at their best," she said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

McCray said Long had suffered from mental illness and the damage done by a demeaning marriage that finally pushed her too far.

"I think that she had sort of reached her wit's end, not specifically even with just Mr. Avery, but sort of with her life," she told the court.

Where Long's life goes from here, how it may affect other lives is something few people know.

"I just want peace," Avery said. "But I don't think I'll get that for a while."