Two days after police arrested Samantha Bachynski and her ex-con fiancé for torturing and murdering a Michigan couple, the 19-year-old accused killer said there was a time when she would have done anything for her 27-year-old boyfriend.

Bachynski admitted to waiting 64 days for Patrick Selepak when he went to jail for assaulting a former girlfriend. When he got out, she invited him to live in the home she shared with her mother and younger brother.

But on the evening she and Selepak strangled Scott and Melissa Berels to death, little more than a month after his release, Bachynski insisted she did so only out of fear that Selepak, whom she called her first real love, would kill her too.

But prosecutors in Michigan believe that the high school honors student acted of her own volition when she assisted Selepak in the deaths of Scott and Melissa Berels, who was pregnant when she was killed on Feb. 15.

Her admissions of guilt and claims of victimization will be a key consideration for jurors in her felony murder trial, which began Tuesday with jury selection in Macomb County Circuit Court after a delay last week.

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Bachynski, now 20, faces life in prison if convicted of 10 counts, including murder, kidnapping and home invasion.

Patrick Selepak has already pleaded guilty for his role in the murders.

When her relationship with Selepak was going well, Bachynski told police, she had never been happier.

"I had the kind of guy that everybody likes to be around. I had somebody that my mom could talk to, someone that my brother could look up to," Bachynski said in a Feb. 23 police interview. "He made me feel like a terrific person, and that is what any 19-year-old girl wants. They want the six-foot-tall beautiful guy to make them feel like they are wanted, and that's what I got at first."

It only took one night, according to Bachynski, for the fairy-tale relationship to unravel into a gruesome crime spree that left three people dead and made the couple the target of a statewide manhunt.

Selepak is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to several charges stemming from the deaths of the Berels and Fred Johnson of Genesee County. Bachynski is expected to stand trial for Johnson's death later this year.

In several lengthy interviews with police after the couple's capture, Bachynski described in chilling detail her role in the couple's deaths in their New Baltimore, Mich., home.

With Scott Berels bound and gagged in another room, Bachynski said, Selepak strangled Melissa Berels until she turned blue and then ordered Bachynski to "finish the job."

"He told me that I am to put my hands on her. That way I can start choking her," Bachynski told police. "I had to. I had a gun pointed at me."

"Did he ever tell you what would happen if you didn't?" Det. Ken Stevens asked her.

"No, he didn't, but if you had a gun pointed at your face, what are you going to assume?" Bachynski said.