Mr. Parvaiz, according to prosecutors, initially described a trio of attackers: one white, one black and one whose race he said he could not determine. He later changed his story, describing all three as black, before finally admitting to setting up the shooting, according to his arrest affidavit. 
 
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 Investigators soon concluded that there was no trio. And on Friday, several people who attended Ms. Noorani’s funeral at the Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center in Boonton said the news that Mr. Parvaiz had been charged was less surprising than his cover story, since there has been little racial or ethnic tension in Boonton. “We were talking to each other and we were like, ‘Who else?’ ” Moheet Durrani, 62, a family friend, said. 
 
 The Morris County prosecutor, Robert Bianchi, said that “for a significant period of time,” Mr. Parvaiz had plotted the killing with a Boston woman whom Mr. Bianchi identified as Antoinette Stephen, 26. Both were charged with first-degree murder; the arrest affidavits did not specify who was alleged to have shot Ms. Noorani. 
 
 Bail for Ms. Stephen was set at $5 million. She was being held in Boston, awaiting extradition to New Jersey. Mr. Parvaiz’s father said Friday outside his home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn , “I have no idea what’s going on.” 
 
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 Mr. Bianchi, at his news conference, said that “there is obviously a relationship” between Ms. Stephen and Mr. Parvaiz. “I am not saying it is a physical relationship,” he said. “I am not saying it is a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship.” He said investigators were working to pin down the details. According to the arrest affidavit, Mr. Parvaiz had told investigators “that there were issues in his marriage and that he was angry at his wife, the victim, for allegedly speaking negatively about his family.” He also seemed to regret her killing, saying “that he did not want to be the person to look at his children and tell them that he took their mother away,” the affidavit said. 
 
 According to the affidavit, Mr. Parvaiz told Ms. Stephen about the turbulence in his six-year marriage and Ms. Stephen promised to “think of something.” The document detailed text messages between them. In one on Aug. 12, four days before the killing, she was said to have written: “You hang in there. Freedom is just around ur corner.” 
 
 On Aug. 14, Mr. Parvaiz is alleged to have sent her a text message: “Well I need to speak to you and explain to you how to approach the situation. I’ll be depositing money tomorrow morning and I’ll see you tomorrow evening night.” 
 
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 Later Ms. Stephen told him she was going on radio silence: “Call me when u can. delete all messages from phone. I wont message from here on.” 
 
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 The plan, according to the affidavit, was that Mr. Parvaiz “would go out for a walk with the victim” and that Ms. Stephen “would kill the victim and wound the suspect.” 
 
 The walk took Mr. Parvaiz and Ms. Noorani from her sister’s house — where Ms. Noorani had broken her daytime Ramadan fast — toward her father’s house a short distance away, where Mr. Parvaiz had parked his car. They left their 5-year-old son with Ms. Noorani’s sister Lubna Choudhry. They took their 3-year-old son with them in a stroller. 
 
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 Ms. Choudhry said she heard noises in the street a few minutes later, noises she assumed were fireworks. But when she went outside, her sister was dead and Mr. Parvaiz was across the street, wounded and bleeding. The child was unhurt. 
 
 By Thursday, conflicting stories had emerged about Mr. Parvaiz, who grew up in Brooklyn, where his father, Shafiq Hassan, owns several properties and a grocery store on Coney Island Avenue. Mr. Parvaiz ran a small contracting business in Brooklyn but told relatives that he had moved to Boston for a doctoral program at Harvard University . Harvard said it had no record that he had been a student. 
 
 The Boston police said he had been arrested in February on charges of assaulting a 20-year-old woman after an argument at his apartment. He was described in the police report as her boyfriend, and it said the dispute had to do with “the fact that she has been unfaithful to him.” The woman, who is from Brooklyn, told the police that Mr. Parvaiz had slapped her in the face and pushed her. But when she declined to cooperate with prosecutors, they dropped the charges. 
 
 The police were called back to the apartment four days later. They found Mr. Parvaiz outside, saying that he had been taking out the trash when three men accosted him and one hit him in the head with a hammer. The police said they searched the neighborhood but found no suspects. 
 
 The affidavit did not spell out the connection between Mr. Parvaiz and Ms. Stephen. But Ms. Stephen’s name appears below Mr. Parvaiz’s on a printed label on the mailbox of his apartment in Boston. Ms. Noorani’s name is also on the mailbox. ||||| A Pakistani-American man whose Pakistan-born wife was gunned down while they and their son walked along a quiet suburban street plotted the killing with another woman and told police his family had been attacked by a group of men who called them terrorists, authorities said Friday. 
 
 In this photo released by the Morris County Prosecutor's office, Kashif Parvaiz is seen in this police booking photo Friday, Aug. 19, 2011. Parvaiz and Antoinette Stephen are charged with connection of... (Associated Press) 
 
 Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi holds the police booking photos of Kashif Parvaiz, left, and Antoinette Stephen, who were charged in the murder of 27-year-old Nazish Noorani, during a news conference,... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo released by the Morris County Prosecutor's office, Antoinette Stephen is seen in this police booking photo, Friday, Aug. 19, 2011. Stephen, 26, and Kashif Parvaiz are charged with connection... (Associated Press) 
 
 Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi announces the arrest of Kashif Parvaiz and Antoinette Stephen, charged in the murder of 27-year-old Nazish Noorani, during a news conference, Friday, Aug. 19,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Kashif Parvaiz, 26, suffered non-life-threatening wounds in the shooting that killed his 27-year-old wife, Nazish Noorani. They were walking with their 3-year-old son, who was in a stroller, to a relative's house in Boonton when shots rang out Tuesday night. The boy was unharmed. The couple's 5-year-old son was with Noorani's family inside the house. 
 
 Parvaiz and 26-year-old Antionette Stephen of Massachusetts both face charges of murder, conspiracy and weapons offenses. He also faces child-endangerment charges. 
 
 Stephen and Parvaiz exchanged text messages in the days leading up to the shooting, according to an arrest affidavit released by the Morris County Prosecutor's Office. 
 
 "You hang in there. Freedom is just around ur corner," read one text sent from a phone listed to Stephen's father to Parvaiz, according to the affidavit. 
 
 Subsequent texts from Stephen's number describe driving around the neighborhood to see how far away the nearest police station was, according to the affidavit. The exchange of texts continued up until 2 p.m. on the day of the shooting, authorities said. 
 
 Parvaiz, who has been in the hospital, was arrested several days ago, authorities said. He was being held on $1 million bail. Authorities said they did not know whether he had a lawyer. 
 
 Stephen was arrested Thursday night in Massachusetts. She was arraigned Friday on a fugitive-from-justice charge and was being held without bail at a women's prison in Massachusetts. It's not clear when she might be returned to New Jersey. Meghan Spring, the attorney who represented her at her arraignment, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. 
 
 Parvaiz, his wife and their son were walking from Noorani's sister's house to her father's house a few blocks away when the shooting occurred. 
 
 According to Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi, Parvaiz's accounts of the attack were inconsistent and immediately raised suspicions. 
 
 Parvaiz told investigators the couple was attacked by a combination of black and white males who shouted ethnic slurs, authorities said. In his initial story, the group shouted something about the family being "terrorists," authorities said. 
 
 Bianchi said investigators were deeply concerned when Parvaiz suggested it was a bias crime, but within hours "it was obvious to investigators that this was sadly the alleged handy work of the victim's husband who allegedly did the unthinkable and plotted to murder his wife." 
 
 Bianchi didn't say whether Stephen and Parvaiz were romantically involved, but investigators wrote in the arrest affidavit that Parvaiz and Noorani had a turbulent relationship. Authorities said Parvaiz met Stephen in Brooklyn, New York City, and the two discussed murdering Noorani. 
 
 Bianchi wouldn't say who pulled the trigger or whether the same person shot both Parvaiz and Noorani. 
 
 Noorani was buried Friday after services at an Islamic center in Boonton, a small town west of New York with a solid Pakistani population. 
 
 Friends and family had set up a website, www.nazishmemorialfund.org, to help the couple's two children. 
 
 The affidavit quotes a text message from Noorani to her brother in which she wrote: "Someday u will find me dead but its cuz of kashi ... He wants to kill me." 
 
 Noorani was a native of Karachi, Pakistan, while Parvaiz was originally from Brooklyn, relatives have said. The couple was wed six years ago after meeting at a music festival in Brooklyn, family members said. They were in Boonton to visit relatives. 
 
 Parvaiz told family he was attending graduate school at Harvard, but the school has no record of him studying there. He told investigators that he had had extramarital affairs, according to the affidavit. 
 
 Stephen, a native of India, was arrested Thursday at her home in Massachusetts, where she lives with her parents and a sister. 
 
 Neighbors said the family moved into the neighborhood about five years ago, renovating an abandoned Colonial house on a quiet residential street. 
 
 Debbie Stillings said the family was Americanized and did not speak with much of an accent. She said Stephen was sometimes visited by a male friend on a motorcycle. 
 
 "They were very friendly and quiet," Stillings said. "My husband teased (Antionette) about the guy on the motorcycle, saying, `Is that your boyfriend?' and she said, `No, he's just a friend.'" 
 
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 Contributing to this report were AP reporters Russell Contreras in Massachusetts, Denise Lavoie in Boston and AP News Researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York.
– A Pakistani-American admitted to police that he set up his wife's murder and made up a cover story about getting jumped by three black men shouting "terrorists!" Kashif Parvaiz of New Jersey and a woman the New York Post describes as his lover, Antoinette Stephen, are under arrest for plotting the shooting of Nazish Noorani. It took place as she walked down a neighborhood street accompanied by her 3-year-old son, who was unharmed, and by Parvaiz, who was wounded in the attack as planned, but not seriously. Afterward, he couldn't keep his story straight, and both police and Noorani's family got suspicious, notes the New York Times. "Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz of Kashi ... he wants to kill me," she recently texted her brother. Police say they also have text records from the suspects laying out intricate details of the plot. "You hang in there," Stephen texted him before the shooting, according to AP. "Freedom is just around ur corner."