MARTINEZ, Calif. — When Susan Polk was arrested nearly four years ago for stabbing her husband to death with a paring knife, one man stood by her and wrote her letters of devotion while she sat in jail awaiting trial on a first-degree murder charge.

"I miss you so much it is driving me crazy ... You are everything to me. I will be there for you for the rest of my life ... The truth about Dad needs to come out," said one of the letters penned by Polk's son, Eli, who took the stand for a sixth day Monday in his mother's murder trial.

"I will always be there for you. You dying is like a part of me dead as well," Eli read aloud Monday from a letter he wrote his mother shortly after she stabbed his father.

Polk, who is acting as her own attorney, faces 25 years to life in prison if she is convicted of murdering her husband. Prosecutors opted not to ask for the death penalty.

Polk urged her son to read the passages to jurors to bolster her claim that her husband was abusive and to counter the prosecution's suggestion that Eli will lie under oath to protect his mother.

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The 48-year-old housewife admits she stabbed her 70-year-old psychologist husband, Dr. Frank "Felix" Polk, in October 2002, but she says it was in self-defense after they fought over the knife.

Eli, 20, is the only one of the couple's three sons to defend their mother. Eli has testified that his father was mentally and physically abusive to the entire family.

Eli was in juvenile detention serving a nine-month sentence for a battery conviction at the time of his father's death. He previously testified that he placed his mother's photo in a frame he made in woodshop and hung it in his locker so he could gaze at her picture every day.

"P.S. I wake up to your face," Eli continued reading to the jury from his letter Monday, choking back tears as he reached the end. "I love you enough to burn all I am and meet you in the afterlife."

Tears streamed down his mother's pale cheeks as he finished reading.

"Do you need to lie at all?" Polk asked, clutching a tissue as she continued redirect examination of her son.

"No," Eli whispered. He dropped his head into his hands and began to sob.

The court took a short break.

Eli previously testified that he would not lie to protect his mother and that if he believed she had "slaughtered" his father, his feelings for her would be different.

The letter he wrote her as they both sat in custody appeared to support his contention that his father was abusive and that he was willing to tell "the truth about Dad." But it's unclear what the jury took away from his impassioned reading.

The panel wordlessly filed out of court Monday, some smiling as they exited.

Eli will return to the stand Tuesday.

Polk's 72-year-old mother, Helen Bolling, sat in the gallery Monday in support of her daughter and grandson, who is also in custody.

Eli was arrested last month for alleged misdemeanor battery of a girlfriend. He denies the charges and will go to trial May 16, when he also faces charges of violating a restraining order and his probation for a 2003 conviction stemming from a police chase.

"Gosh, he's good looking," Bolling remarked Monday as she watched Eli take the stand after entering the courtroom from a side door in handcuffs. "That's my grandson."

When someone commented that all three of her grandsons were handsome, Bolling replied, "Well, thank you. But only one has real character."

Gabriel Polk, 19, and Adam Polk, 23, have distanced themselves from their mother and recently settled a wrongful death suit against her. They previously testified for the prosecution that their mother was delusional, confrontational and spoke openly about killing their father.

Polk expects to recall Gabriel and Adam to the stand in the coming days.

Bolling served as her daughter's first witness when Polk began her case April 24.

Bolling testified about Felix's pursuit, some 34 years ago, of an unethical and salacious relationship with her daughter, when he was a 40-year-old therapist and the defendant was a 15-year-old patient in his care.

The taboo couple eventually wed in 1982 when she turned 25 and he was 50.

The Polks were at the end of a contentious divorce when Susan stabbed Felix to death in the pool house of their $2 million home.