MARTINEZ, Calif. — Before California housewife Susan Polk stabbed her husband to death with a knife, she allegedly considered drowning him, running him over with her car, or shooting him with a shotgun, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday during opening statements in Polk's first-degree murder trial.

Polk allegedly discussed potential ways to kill her husband with the couple's youngest son Gabriel.

"She thought that Gabe was buying into it because he wasn't getting along with the victim at that point," Assistant District Attorney Paul Sequeira said.

With his parents in the middle of a nasty divorce, Gabriel didn't take his mother's threats seriously, Sequeira said, until he discovered his father lying face-up in a pool of blood on the floor of a guest cottage at the family's $2 million property and assumed his mother made good on a promise to shoot him.

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Sequeira said the boy hid as he called police from his cellphone.

"Can you imagine?" Sequeira said. "You're 15 and you've just seen this."

He held up a crime scene photograph depicting Frank "Felix" Polk's partially naked body allegedly in his death position, and continued: "You call 911. Presumably the killer could be anyone on the planet, and what does he tell police? His mom shot his dad. He knew what happened."

Gabriel, now 19, presumably did not realize that his father had no gunshot wounds.

He is expected to testify against his mother on Wednesday as the first witness for the state in a case that has garnered national attention, not just for the unsavory secrets that have been revealed about the Polk marriage, but also because Susan Polk is preparing to cross-examine her own children, as she has decided to represent herself.

Polk might say she is defending herself for a second time.

Polk, 48, admits she killed her 70-year-old husband in October 2002, but she claims it was an act of self-defense, not murder.

She says she endured continual physical and emotional abuse during her 30-year relationship with Felix Polk, a man who became her therapist as a teenager, a lover soon after, and a husband by the time she turned 25.

Polk also claims she is the target of an improper investigation and that she has been railroaded by investigators, victimized again, just as she was once victimized by a domineering husband.

Tears streamed down the defendant's face as the prosecutor recounted in his opening statement the taboo relationship between a therapist and patient that resulted in marriage, but ended in murder.

"You are about to embark on a journey through a dysfunctional relationship," Sequeira told the panel.

Polk's back stiffened when Sequeira pegged her as an obsessive, controlling wife whose anger festered into murder.

Sequeira told jurors that Susan Polk had a "trail of conflicts" in her past, including "paranoid delusions and suspicions" that her children were molested by their caregivers, that she was raped by her father, and that her husband was a secret intelligence agent who had money hidden in off-shore bank accounts.

Polk objected nine times in the first 15 minutes of the opening statement.

"I'm not going to admonish you again," Judge Laurel Brady warned. "This is not the time to argue your case."

The defendant kept her cool until Sequeira claimed Polk even belittled her husband about his penis size.

"This is not true!" Polk said in exasperation, throwing her pen on the table.

Judge Brady warned that the next interruption would prompt her removal from the courtroom.

Polk pursed her lips and did not object again in the presence of the jury. She has waived her opening statement until later in the trial.

Who's the victim?

Felix Polk was not an abuser, prosecutors say, but a man who genuinely feared his wife and even told friends before his death that he thought Susan would kill him.

Polk initially denied killing her husband when police questioned her, but she later said she stabbed him in self-defense after he lunged at her first with the knife.

Sequeira told jurors Tuesday that she also tried to cover up the killing by discarding her bloody clothes, the murder weapon, and leaving Felix's car at a train station.

Forensic investigators turned to the victim's wounds for answers.

"His body tells a story. His body is evidence," Sequeira said, showing jurors glossy color photographs that depict alleged defensive wounds on Polk's forearms and hands, as if he were trying to block and grab the knife.

Prosecutors also allege that Felix suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and they believe Polk hit him with an unidentified object to try to disable him first.

Polk argued at length outside the presence of the jury, saying that Sequeira had no way of knowing if her husband suffered blunt force trauma. She accused the prosecutor of telling the jury outright lies that undermined her chance at a fair trial.

"To undo that damage is a huge task for the defense," Polk continued. "This is a travesty. And saying that I made fun of the size of my husband's penis — excuse me? It's absolutely not true."

The judge, who appeared to be losing patience by day's end, reminded the defendant that opening statements are not facts and that she had repeatedly instructed the jury as much.

Prosecutor Sequeira countered that many of his statements about the Polk relationship were based on interviews with witnesses, including the couple's eldest son Adam.

Adam, 23, is also expected to testify against his mother.

Meanwhile, the middle child, Eli, 19, intends to defend his mother. Eli has spoken openly since his father's death, telling reporters that he suffered continual emotional and physical abuse at his father's hands.

This is Susan Polk's second time at the defense table. Her first trial in October ended in a mistrial after her attorney Daniel Horowitz's wife was brutally killed. A teenage neighbor has since been arrested and charged with her murder.

Polk eventually fired Horowitz, her fourth and last attorney, and was granted permission to represent herself. Her trial is expected to last two and a half months.