LAS VEGAS — Margaret Rudin knew her husband was depressed, angry and having an affair before he was shot and decapitated in 1994 but she told a police detective investigating Ron Rudin's disappearance that the couple's stormy marriage was bright and sunny at the time.

The claim, made during a taped 20-minute interview with police two days after real estate developer Ron Rudin disappeared, stands in stark contrast to a portrait prosecutors are painting of a jealous, distrustful relationship that had deteriorated to the point of eavesdropping and murder.

On Monday, jurors who will decide Margaret Rudin's guilt or innocence listened intently as the defendant described her life with Ron Rudin to Las Vegas Police Detective Patrick Barry. If convicted of her husband's murder, Rudin faces a possible life sentence.

The tape is scratchy in parts, but Margaret Rudin's soft voice could be heard clearly in the courtroom as Barry sat in the witness box this afternoon.

"He said, 'Everything is fine. I love you,'" Rudin, 57, told Barry during the Dec. 22, 1994, interview at the antiques shop she owned.

Rudin said the affectionate comment was made during a cellphone call she made to her husband on the night police believe he was shot to death in the couple's home. Rudin spent the day working at her antiques shop, according to her statement, and went home at about 6:30 p.m. to find her husband watching TV and reading a newspaper.

The couple talked about going to a movie or watching TV, but could not find a show that appealed to them. Ron Rudin joked about going to a movie with someone else, but Margaret Rudin dismissed the comment as teasing, according to what she told Barry.

Asked about other women, Margaret Rudin told Barry that she called her husband's admitted mistress, Sue Lyles, the day after he disappeared to see if she was home. She was, but the two did not speak.

"He was having an affair. He talked to me about it," Rudin said. "But he told me that he was going to stop seeing her in September."

Rudin, who allegedly taped some of her husband's conversations with Lyles and other people, told Barry in the taped interview that her husband was depressed. A former wife committed suicide around Christmas years before, and the holidays usually made Ron Rudin sad, Margaret Rudin said.

"He always is getting real depressed this time of year. He gets real down," she continued. "He's been really angry lately and a lot of times he doesn't tell me everything, you know. More than depressive what's been coming through has been anger at everybody."

Rudin told the detective that her husband may have been "peeved at me" for working so much that weekend and for returning to the antiques shop after they failed to agree on a movie. She said the last time she spoke with him was during the 9 p.m. cellphone call. When Margaret Rudin returned home about 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 19, 1994, her husband and his car were gone, she told Barry.

Margaret Rudin did not report her husband missing until December 20, after police told her that two of his employees were going to file a report. Her defense team claims that she called police on December 19 but was told that she had to wait 48 hours, contrary to department policy at the time.

In her taped statement on Dec. 22, 1994, Rudin told Barry that she was not initially concerned when her husband failed to resurface two days earlier.

"I thought maybe ... he needed to get away for a couple days. He just needed to go by himself," she said.

Rudin also noted that her husband believed he may have been possessed by the spirit of his ex-wife and that he had previously sought medical treatment for "de-possession." This could have explained his sudden absence, she hypothesized on the tape.

"That's why at first I wasn't that upset because I know that demon de-possession is something that he practices," Rudin said.

"Demon what?" Barry asked in the interview.

"De-possession," Rudin replied.

Much of Margaret Rudin's defense rests on her claim that Ron Rudin had enemies, including shady business associates, beneficiaries of his $11 million trust and employees he had talked about firing when he disappeared. In fact, she inferred that her husband may have involved himself in something that no one knew about nearly a full month before his skull was found near Lake Mohave.

"He is a very, very private man ... Nobody knows the whole picture. Nobody knows the whole Ron," Margaret Rudin can be heard saying on the tape.

At another point, she told Barry that Ron Rudin could treat her very well or very badly.

"Our whole relationship has been either very good or very bad ... There have been times that I think that I am just not gonna be here," she said. "Lately, things have been very, very good."