Jennifer Trayers testified on Tuesday that her Navy doctor husband died during a struggle over a knife that she intended to use on herself.
Trayers said she approached her husband of 18 years, Fred, in their bedroom of their North Park condominium with a knife on Dec. 4, 2010.
She said she was hoping to get him talking about his ongoing affair by cutting her wrist, then poking the knife in her chest.
She testified Fred said, "Let me help you."
“He's never acted this way before and I didn't know -- it was so unlike Fred, this behavior,” Trayers said. “I didn't know what would happen if he got hold of the knife."
It happened in the couple's North Park condominium, where Trayers says she was obsessed over Fred's plans to leave her for another Navy doctor.
The knife that inflicted the fatal wounds: a military “Ka-Bar” that Trayers testified Fred offered her, after laughing at her attempts to cut herself with a butcher knife from the kitchen.
Trayers insisted she never planned to kill Fred, whose emails and text communications with the other woman she'd intercepted using a spyware program.
She'd written the woman, who testified last week as a prosecution witness, saying in essence, she'd seen Fred for the last time.
During the struggle for the knife, Trayers said she was cut and stabbed numerous times before Fred reached for, and dropped, the butcher knife.
"What happened then?" asked defense attorney Kerry Armstrong.
"I stabbed him in the back of the neck," Trayers replied.
"And when you stabbed him, what were you thinking?" Armstrong inquired a short time later.
"I was just so angry and mad and I didn't know what was going on, what was happening, why he was acting the way he was acting," Trayers said. "I didn't know what was going to happen.
Trayers testified she "blacked out" after the first stab, and was out of it for many hours later.
Fred's body was found with nine more stab wounds.
Earlier in the week Trayers admitted she was having an affair as well.
Closing statements begin Wednesday -- Trayers faces 26 years to life in prison if found guilty.
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