LAS VEGAS — The second wife of slain real estate developer Ron Rudin took the stand against his fifth wife and alleged killer Thursday and offered an emotional and emphatic defense of her ex-husband's character and business dealings.

"He was a delightful man," Caralynne Rudin told jurors in the murder trial of so-called Black Widow Margaret Rudin. "He was my very good friend and business associate."

The defense has assailed Rudin as a shady businessman, abusive drunk and paranoid eccentric whose 1994 murder could have been committed by any number of people. Caralynne Rudin, who divorced the millionaire in 1976 but remained close to him and still wears his ring on her wedding band finger, seemed eager to use what she called her "few brief moments with the jury" to respond.

Wiping a tear from her eye, she spoke of the "silent people you don't hear about" who loved and admired Ron Rudin, and claimed "all [the defense attorneys] want to talk about my former husband who was brutally murdered is his one problem, his drinking."

She took pains to downplay his battles with alcohol. Most of her testimony, however, came in her capacity as a real estate broker, explaining the business practices the defense claims were fraudulent and a motive for murder. On cross-examination, she answered question after question about deeds and escrow papers.

Judge Joseph Bonaventure, who had warned the defense Wednesday not to bog down the six-week-long trial any further with disorganized cross-examinations, became irate.

"Time has no meaning!" he bellowed.

He sent the jury home at 3:50 p.m. and stormed off the bench.

Caralynne Rudin, whose testimony will continue Friday, looked at the prosecutor and the jury during her six hours on the stand, but seemed to avoid eye contact with the defendant. The women never met during Margaret's seven-year marriage, but with their ash blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin, they look enough alike to be sisters.

Rudin is facing life in prison for her husband's fatal shooting. Prosecutors contend she was tired of his philandering and wanted his $11 million fortune. His charred remains were discovered in the desert about a month after his employees reported him missing. Police detectives say his wife never showed any interest in locating him and was unemotional when told of his death.

By contrast, Caralynne Rudin said she was worried after she learned of her ex-husband's disappearance and hired a private investigator to track him down. Even though she had left Rudin in 1976 because of his drinking, they continued working together as real estate brokers and spoke several times a week about business and personal matters.

"Our divorce was a very sad divorce," she explained. "But it was a very amicable arrangement."

At times, she sounded more like a widow, than an ex-wife. She described Rudin as "very good looking and a very snazzy dresser" and said he was kind-hearted and meticulous. She held up the ring Rudin bought her, a mountain of diamonds surrounding a huge emerald, and described the jewelry he wore. In addition to a pair of "very masculine" white gold rings studded with pear-shaped three-carat diamonds, he always wore a gold bracelet with his name spelled out in diamonds, a gift from her, she testified. That bracelet was discovered alongside his remains.

Under cross-examination, she reluctantly discussed Rudin's drinking.

"This is really difficult," she said. A day earlier, jurors heard Rudin's fourth wife describe him as a mean, verbally abusive drunk during her 1985 to 1987 marriage. But Caralynne Rudin said she believed her ex-husband had stopped drinking during the last eight years of his life. She said that when he was using alcohol, he was a quiet, unobtrusive drunk who became "silly" and then fell asleep.

"His drinking never affected anyone but himself," she claimed. "He was never abusive, he was never unkind."

The defense has suggested that a land deal in which Rudin used the names of friends or relatives to front for his own dealings might have been a motive for his murder. Caralynne Rudin tried to debunk that theory, telling jurors that it was a common practice to use straw men in the paperwork to subdivide a large piece of property.

The names Rudin chose and their signatures on the documents were unimportant, she said.

"It could've been Scooby-Doo, it was just a name," she said. She later qualified that answer, adding "if Scooby-Doo had a hand rather than a paw."