A Franklin County kindergarten teacher was arrested in a murder-for-hire plot to kill her ex-husband only months after she requested a protective order against the same man, court records show.

Authorities on Wednesday arrested Angela Robin Nolen , a 47-year-old Sontag Elementary School teacher, on a charge of solicitation to commit murder. Investigators said Nolen had approached an undercover state police agent Tuesday about paying $8,000 to kill 63-year-old Paul J. Strickler.

In October 2012, Nolen successfully obtained a court order that barred Strickler from contacting her. The order also placed limits on Strickler’s interaction with the pair’s 7-year-old daughter.

Investigators said Nolen acted in concert with a friend, Sontag Elementary nurse Cathy W. Bennett , 37, of Rocky Mount. Bennett was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

On Thursday in Franklin County General District Court, retired Judge Frank Greenwalt granted Bennett a $60,000 bond.

“This certainly is an unusual charge and an unusual situation,” Greenwalt said.

Bennett was listed as an inmate at Western Virginia Regional Jail Thursday evening.

Still, the primary focus of the case remains on Nolen, and the story behind a criminal charge rarely brought in Southwest Virginia. Nolen was originally scheduled to appear Thursday in court for a bond hearing. That hearing was postponed.

Her defense attorney, David Furrow, did not respond to a message left for him.

Court records offer a patchy version of the couple’s relationship, from their July 2000 marriage in Cozumel, Mexico, to a year-and-a-half-long divorce fraught with property squabbles and a disagreement over the custody of the couple’s daughter.

According to records in Franklin County Circuit Court, the problems that bedeviled their marriage appeared to have come to a head on Sept. 22, 2011, during an argument about bank records. About a month later Strickler filed for divorce, accusing Nolen of having an affair.

A Franklin County Sheriff’s Office deputy served her with the papers at Sontag Elementary on Nov. 4, 2011.

On Nov. 21, Nolen submitted a response to the original filing, denying her husband’s adultery accusation and adding that he had physically and mentally abused her, drank excessively and obsessively approached her about a suspected extra-marital affair.

In the divorce filings, Nolen detailed her own version of the Sept. 22 argument, saying Strickler had grabbed the largest kitchen knife in the house and then had run around with it, making threats.

He denied those claims, although he said he did throw her car keys into the back yard and threatened to slice one of her tires, records show.

The divorce filing documents an unrelenting back-and-forth between the two that went on for a year. But much of the story took place between court filings and remains a mystery.

Why a judge gave Nolen full custody of the couple’s daughter is unclear. So is an explanation for why Nolen, more than a year into the proceedings, requested a two-year protective order against Strickler. That order barred any contact between the two and limited Strickler’s contact with his daughter to 15 minutes a week via telephone.

The order was still in effect Tuesday when, state police said, Nolen met with a supposed hit man to have her ex-husband killed.

Nolen and Bennett are scheduled to appear in Franklin County General District Court for preliminary hearings in March.

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