Prosecutors expect to announce Monday that they have finished their case against Susan Polk, a California housewife who is defending herself at her own murder trial against charges that she stabbed her husband to death with a paring knife in October 2002.

On Thursday, Polk wrapped up a third contentious day of cross-examination of a star prosecution witness: her eldest son, Adam Polk.

"You're the embodiment of evil," the 23-year-old college student told his mother Thursday, adding that he would be "scared" if she were released from custody.

Polk, a diminutive 48-year-old with a singsong voice, tried to brushed away her son's acrid remarks, but her questioning was weepy at times, angry at others.

"Do you think my defending myself in a murder trial is absurd?" Polk tearfully asked after Adam smiled at some of her questions and admitted he thought the trial had elements of the absurd.

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Polk claims she stabbed her 70-year-old psychologist husband Felix Polk to death in self-defense after a struggle for the blade.

Adam, however, denied his father was ever abusive to his mother, and during his time on the stand, he told her she was "cruel-hearted," "crazy," and constantly "warping" facts.

At one point he blurted out, "You're bonkers! You're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," causing the court and gallery members to barely stifle their laughter.

Polk accused her son of slanting his testimony against her and rewriting the family's history to make her husband appear innocent. She says Felix Polk subjected her to mental and physical abuse during their 30-year relationship.

But Adam confirmed what previous witnesses have said, that he believed his mother killed his father willfully and that she suffered from delusional behavior.

Adam told the jury that based on his understanding of the forensic evidence, as well as his mother's behavior, he imagined that on the night of his father's death, she likely walked into the cottage where Felix Polk was sleeping during the couple's nasty divorce battle, that she bludgeoned him, stabbed him twice in the back as he fell over, climbed on top of him and then stabbed him to death.

Adam is the second of Polk's three sons to testify at her murder trial. Unlike his brother Eli, 20, who has aligned himself with his mother and will testify in her defense when she begins her case, Adam slowly distanced himself from his mother after his father's death and joined his brother Gabriel in a wrongful death suit.

That suit was settled earlier this year for $300,000 to be split between Adam and Gabriel.

It was Gabriel, then 15, who found his father's bloody body in the cottage of the couple's $1.85 million Craftsman home in the upscale neighborhood of Orinda, Calif.

Gabriel, now 19, previously spent four tedious days on the stand, holding back tears by the end as he answered his mother's every obsessive inquiry, ranging from the trite ("Are you aware your brother Eli scored 10,000 on Tetris when he was 3 years old?") to the accusatory ("Didn't you express absolute hatred for your father?").

The judge finally forced Polk to finish, warning her that her questioning of Gabriel was "bordering on the abusive."

She intends to recall her youngest son when she begins her case.

Adam Polk was excused Thursday so he could return to Los Angeles for final exams, but he too will come back for one more day of cross-examination, as an out-of-order witness.

Polk may deliver her opening statements and call her first witness as early as Monday.

Susan Mae Bolling first met Felix Polk when he was a 40-year-old therapist and married father of two and she was his 15-year-old patient, suffering from anxiety.

She claims they were having sex by the time she turned 16. They married in 1982 when she was 25 and he was 50.

When she was arrested on Oct. 14, 2002, for his murder, Polk initially denied any knowledge of what happened, but later claimed she acted in self-defense.

Polk says she lied about the stabbing because she was suspicious of police, and that her husband held sway over law enforcement because of his position in the community.

She faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of his murder.