RALEIGH -- Joanna Madonna recounted for jurors on Wednesday her recollection of the night she told her husband she wanted out of their marriage – and the gunshots and knife fight that followed.
In a clear, strong voice, she testified in her defense on the seventh day of the trial in Wake County Superior Court over accusations that she murdered her husband.
Madonna, 48, is charged with plotting the violent death of Jose Perez on Father’s Day weekend in June 2013.
The former Wake County teacher provided jurors with a daylong account of her life until Father’s Day on June 16, 2013, when police came to her home on Schoolhouse Street in Brier Creek neighborhood, investigating Perez’s death.
Perez, almost 18 years older than Madonna, was found dead in a ditch near Falls Lake by a passerby earlier that morning.
What led to Perez’s death has been the subject of competing narratives in a trial that has highlighted tribulations of people who bonded over substance abuse issues and their resolve to stay sober.
Prosecutors contend Madonna killed her husband shortly after starting a romantic relationship with her former therapist.
Quickly after settling into the witness box on Wednesday, Madonna admitted she had a hand in her husband’s death but said she did not plot to kill him.
Madonna married Perez, a man she met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and befriended while still married to a different husband.
