LAWRENCE, Mass. (Court TV) — Jurors in the insanity defense trial of a transvestite dermatologist accused of killing his wife wiped away tears Tuesday morning as they listened to a desperate 911 call from the victim's brother.

"The shooter is still on the premises as far as I know, and there's somebody here who might be dying in my arms," James Hatfield told an emergency operator on the tape played on the second day of testimony against physician Richard Sharpe.

Hatfield was visiting his sister, Karen Sharpe, on July 14, 2000 when her estranged husband, a millionaire doctor who dabbled in cross dressing, burst through the front door of her home and fired a single rifle blast that pierced her chest and severed her spinal cord.

Speaking in a halting voice and taking frequent sips of water, her brother, a strapping 37-year-old UPS driver, recounted chasing after his brother-in-law but then returning to cradle his mortally wounded sister with one hand and call 911 with the other.

"I went back to try to save my sister," he said.

During his emotional testimony and the playing of his frantic call to 911, two female jurors wiped their eyes and Sharpe's sister, brother-in-law and father cried softly in the front row of the courtroom. And there was more heartache for the family. Later in the day, a forensic expert displayed the victim's blood-stained dress and white cardigan.

As Hatfield gave his wrenching testimony, the defendant, 47, slouched over at the defense table, shielding his eyes from jurors' frequent gaze. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. His lawyers, who are to open their case later this week, maintain years of childhood abuse left him with a laundry list of mental problems that rendered him insane at the time of the shooting.

But prosecutors claim Sharpe knew exactly what he was doing. With a string of witnesses Tuesday, they set about portraying the crime as calculated and Sharpe as a spurned husband enraged by his wife's decision to end the 26-year marriage and worried about the negative financial impact of a divorce.

Hatfield testified the doctor came to the door just before midnight and asked to speak with his ex-wife, who had taken out a restraining order requiring him to stay 20 yards from her. Hatfield's then-girlfriend, Christine Regan, was also at the home and testified that Karen Sharpe shooed her husband away.

"That's when he shot her with that gun," she said, adding "I think he cocked it."

Connie Behnke, a close friend of Karen Sharpe, testified that the defendant disrespected his wife frequently, calling her fat and ugly and saying she "didn't know what she was talking about." After she left the marriage in February 2000, Behnke said, Richard Sharpe called her several times to seek "advice on how they might reconcile." She said Sharpe always mentioned money that he claimed his wife had stolen from him.

"The money was always part of the conversations," said Behnke, a housewife with three children. "He was feeling pinched financially."

As Behnke testified about an instance in which Sharpe told his son Michael, then 7, "Your mother stole my money," Sharpe cried out from the defense table, "I seriously doubt that." He was quickly hushed by a court officer, but it was the second outburst of the trial. During openings, he called prosecutor Robert Weiner a liar when he suggested Sharpe's money woes were a motive for murder.

Also Tuesday, a gun collector from the seaside town of Gloucester — a man who had once dated an employee of Sharpe — testified that the doctor approached him three weeks before the shooting in an attempt to buy a gun, which he said he needed for home protection.

"I told him I didn't have any for sale," said Alden Tarr, Jr. The murder weapon, a .22-caliber rifle, according to a ballistics expert who testified Tuesday, was never found, but Tarr said another gun, a .30-caliber rifle used for moose hunting was stolen from his home the day of the shooting. That gun has not been recovered either.

The defendant had supporters in the courtroom gallery for the first time Tuesday. A woman who had attended college with Sharpe and her grown daughter sat across the aisle from the victim's family. The mother, who like her daughter refused to give her name, said she had traveled from Pennsylvania for the trial. Sharpe smiled several times at the pair and passed a note to the daughter, who smiled back at him.

As the trial enters its third day, jurors have heard little about Sharpe's cross dressing, the aspect of the case that made it a local sensation. Hatfield testified that he knew nothing about his brother-in-law's penchant for dresses and wigs until after his sister's death. According to an affidavit filed by Karen Sharpe a few months before her death, her husband often dressed as a woman and stole her birth control pills an attempt to grow breasts. His elder daughter, Shannon, filed court papers alleging her father was a transvestite and wore her underwear on occasion. Extensive psychiatric testimony about Sharpe and his mental history is expected during the defense case.