The trial for a wife accused of murdering her Navy doctor husband began Monday.
Prosecutors say Jennifer Trayers stabbed her husband to death while he was sleeping but the defense says she never planned to kill him.
A woman who allegedly murdered her husband sat emotionless as the prosecution painted her as a woman scorned.
Trayers is accused of stabbing her husband multiple times because she said she’d had enough of his extra-marital affair.
"The evidence will show that she waited to catch him unprepared and she armed herself with knives that she attacked him with planned marksmanship,” said Deputy District Attorney Fiona Khalil.
Khalil told the jury Trayers waited for her husband, Navy Doctor, Lt. Cmdr. Commander Fred Trayers, to fall asleep before killing him, and sent an email to her husband's mistress just hours before she stabbed him to death in their North Park condo back in December 2010.
“My husband is not going to be yours. You should feel guilty now.” Trayers wrote in the email. “You just ruined the marriage of a wonderful man. The career of a wonderful man. The future of a wonderful man.”
Defense Attorney Kerry Armstrong painted a different picture of what happened.
He said the stabbing was the result of a 90-day emotional roller coaster Trayers went through after learning of her husband's affair, and said on that night in December, she was trying kill herself.
"She took the knife as they were wrestling over it. Away from Mr. Trayers and just started stabbing. Just started stabbing him in the upper body area,” explained Armstrong.
Armstrong said his client had no intentions of killing her husband.
"Once you've heard all the evidence, especially after you've heard from Mrs. Trayers I fully believe you will vote not guilty on murder but guilty on voluntary manslaughter,” Armstrong argued.
Defense Attorney Kerry Armstrong said Trayers did have self-inflicted wounds to her chest and torso. He also said Trayers will testify during the trial.
