MARTINEZ, Calif. — California housewife Susan Polk knows her way around kitchen knives.

In a courtroom show-and-tell session Tuesday, Polk showed jurors a series of knives seized from her home shortly after she was arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband Felix Polk in October 2002.

As jurors viewed a set of steak knives, a bread knife, and a butcher knife in a wooden block, Polk described the different ways she used to sharpen and care for the family's knives, at least one of which was a wedding gift.

Polk asked the deputy to show jurors a paring knife with a black handle that was purchased in 2001.

"And that was the knife he had in the cottage that he attacked me with," Polk said nonchalantly after the blade was put back in the evidence bag. "Afterwards, I picked it up, brought it back into the kitchen, washed it and dried it, and put it away."

Story continues

Polk was arrested Oct. 14, 2002, after her psychologist husband's bloody body was found in the cottage of their $1.85 million Orinda home by the couple's youngest son.

Polk, 48, claims she stabbed the 70-year-old man in self-defense after a violent struggle for the blade. She says she suffered from years of physical and mental abuse at his hands. She also denies killing Felix, and says he died of a heart attack while he was attacking her.

Polk, who is acting as her own attorney, completed a fourth day of direct testimony Tuesday.

She is not allowed to touch the knives, nor did she ask. She testified from the witness box while a tall deputy with a shaved head picked up the paring knife with white latex gloves, holding it by its handle for jurors to view.

"That knife was everyone's favorite," Polk said. It was sharp and her sons liked to use it when they were eating steak, she said. "It was always disappearing."

Polk claims that detectives did sloppy work on her case and manipulated the crime scene by moving her husband's body and pouring water on his head to make an act of self-defense appear to be an act of murder.

A detective previously testified that a steak knife with a bent tip collected from the home was taken out of the dishwasher. Polk testified that the officer perjured himself. She never put knives in the dishwasher, she said: "It damages the wooden handles."

Forensics determined that the steak knife with the bent tip did not match Felix's wounds. Polk said she was the one who discovered the paring knife in a storage box while she was out on bail. She said she directed her former attorney to hand it over to prosecutors in April 2005.