LAS VEGAS (Court TV) — Is Margaret Rudin a millionaire's wife driven to murder by greed and jealousy, or a grandmotherly widow being framed by powerful businessmen and police?

Both possibilities were presented Friday to the Las Vegas jury deciding whether Rudin murdered her husband, real estate mogul Ron Rudin. In dramatic opening statements, the lawyers painted two very different portraits of the gray-haired woman who sat at the defense table, alternately taking notes and looking toward the jury box.

Dressed in a black suit with her hair — now blond only at the tips — pulled back in a ponytail, the widow smiled warmly as she shook hands with courtroom observers, more reminiscent of the socialite she once was than the accused murderer she is now.

Though cordial and soft-spoken, Rudin had an obsession with controlling the lives of others, prosecutor Chris Owens alleged during his two-and-a-half hour opening. He used Rudin's own words, from her diary, to make this point.

Referring to her own life as "Margaret's Life" and comparing it to a play, the widow wrote that, while her life has always been unique and exciting, she "never realized what control I could have..."

Owens told the jury that Margaret Rudin shot her husband in the head as he slept in their Las Vegas home. Rudin was initially reported missing, but his charred, decapitated remains turned up little more than a month after his Dec. 18, 1994, disappearance.

"Like an individual in the center of her own soap opera, she manipulated like a puppeteer pulling strings," prosecutor Chris Owens told the jury. "She tried to get the control she wanted in her life."

Owens, who methodically walked the panel through the prosecution's case, told the jury that Rudin had both the motive and the means to kill her husband. As the jurors listened to the mounds of evidence prosecutors hope will lead to a conviction, they also saw photos of Ron Rudin's skull and the wigs Margaret Rudin had in her possession when she was caught after a two-year flight from authorities.

According to prosecutors, money and jealousy drove Rudin to kill. They allege that she installed listening devices in her husband's real office without his knowledge to find out about other women and business dealings. Though the couple had a rocky marriage, even almost divorcing a year after their 1987 wedding, prosecutors say Margaret Rudin tried to hide her marital problems from investigators.

"Lately things have been very good," Rudin told police, according to Owens. She did not mention her knowledge of his affair with former employee Sue Lyles until asked.

The jury will also see anonymous typed letters sent to Lyles' children telling them about the affair between Lyles and Rudin. Prosecutors contend that Margaret Rudin wrote the letters and that Rudin had planned on confronting his wife about them.

But what Margaret Rudin didn't plan on in the course of her "play," Owens said, was that Ron Rudin would "rewrite" an act. Although she stood to inherit 60 percent of her husband's $11 million estate, Ron Rudin secretly drafted a directive — cutting off any beneficiary suspected in his death should he be murdered.

Within months of their marriage, Owens said, a semiautomatic Ruger disappeared from Ron Rudin's gun collection — and was later found at the bottom of Lake Mead three years after Rudin's remains were discovered.

Lyles is expected to testify, as is Margaret Rudin's friend Yehuda Sharon, who drove her to the airport when she fled — and who was initially suspected to be an accomplice. Sharon, however, was granted an immunity deal.

Calling Ron Rudin a person you "could set your watch by," Owens said the mogul's employees were surprised when he failed to show up at work, although his own wife didn't report him missing until almost two days later.

Before Rudin's remains were discovered by three fishermen in Nelson's Landing, Margaret Rudin remodeled the bedroom she had shared with her husband. Prosecutors plan on calling to the stand Augustine Lovato, an ex-felon, who will testify that he saw what he believes was dried blood on the bedroom carpet when he was hired to remove the rug from the room.

Rudin initially just asked him to remove only a section of the carpet — around the perimeter of the bed — before giving him the go-ahead to remove the entire rug. Lovato will also testify that he saw a liquid that looked like blood in the adjacent bathroom and that Rudin gave him a package to mail for her. Instead of mailing the package, however, he turned it over to police who obtained a search warrant to open the package and go into the house to collect evidence from the bedroom.

Luminol tests show traces of blood on the ceiling and other areas surrounding the bed. DNA evidence will also be presented to show that the blood belonged to Ron Rudin and not his third wife, Peggy, who allegedly committed suicide by shooting herself in the head while lying in the same spot prosecutors claim Ron Rudin was murdered.

Owens also noted that Rudin called her husband's business partner in a "soft Southern voice, really sweet," asking to have her name added as trustee to her husband's estate.

Jurors then learned of Rudin's two years on the lam. She left Las Vegas just days before a grand jury indicted her for murder. Posing as pizza delivery men, police eventually captured her hiding in the bathroom in a small apartment in Revere, Mass.

"This is about Las Vegas, isn't it?" Margaret Rudin said to police, Owens said.

Owens concluded his presentation by asking the jury to write the final scene of Rudin's play — by convicting her of murder.

The defense is hoping for its own version of a happy ending. Defense lawyer Michael Amador told the panel that Ron Rudin's business partners had a well-connected "army" of lawyers and allies in the police department — and more motive to kill Rudin than his wife did.

The defense contends that the late real estate tycoon was riddled with debt, and that he and his business partners left a paper trail of fraud.

During his three-hour delivery, Amador charged that prosecutors have tailored evidence to fit their own theory of the crime. But the prosecution's case will fall like "a house of cards," Amador said.

"I anticipate that the evidence in this case will show no murder took place in that bedroom and there's absolutely no physical evidence that you can rely upon to prove that," he said.

"If one piece of it is pulled out, the whole thing falls," he said of the prosecution's case.

Amador painted a picture of a man who wore all black and who carried guns on him at all times, acknowledgement that he had enemies.

"He didn't take anything from anybody," he said. "He did things to indicate a level of paranoia or fear that doesn't seem to be consistent."

Among the witnesses Amador said he will call to the stand are Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell, who as a divorce lawyer represented Margaret Rudin during her divorce from her fourth husband. That husband, Amador said, was far wealthier than Ron Rudin.

"Mr. Bell can confirm she doesn't kill her husbands — she divorces them," Amador said. With her former attorney heading up a criminal investigation against her and a civil proceeding that left her with $600,000 from her late husband's estate, just enough to cover attorney fees, Rudin developed such a distrust of the legal system she felt she had no other choice but to flee, Amador said.

Amador also explained away the two days Rudin waited to report her husband missing, claiming that police told her she couldn't do so until 48 hours passed. He also said she "had some really good reasons" for remodeling the bedroom.

"It felt eerie for her to go in there," he said.

Amador, who has filed motions alleging prosecutorial misconduct, also called Owens' opening statement "the best money could buy," gesturing toward the prosecutor as he told the jury that he and Owens were sworn in as deputy district attorneys together.

But Amador deviated frequently from the subject at hand into abstract philosophy, annoying Judge Joseph Bonaventure in the process.

"This is a great day," Amador said as he began his statement. "I look for passion in people. I look for not merely those who wish to exist but people who want to celebrate life."

Bonaventure warned the defense lawyer to get to the point, saying he was losing patience.

Stephen Vermilya and Russell Dillon, two of the men who discovered Ron Rudin's skull at Nelson's Landing while on a fishing trip, kicked off testimony for the prosecution. The two men, both military policemen with the U.S. Air Force, recounted finding Rudin's skull.

Prosecutors intend to call about 70 witnesses. The trial is expected to last about six weeks.