The wife of a sheriff deputy has given graphic testimony alleging he tortured and sexually assaulted her and her new partner in a vicious two-hour attack.
The woman was married to defendant Robert McClain, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, and pretended to castrate her 23-year-old boyfriend as the husband watched, prosecutors previously said.
As she took to the stand, the unidentified woman was visibly distressed as she told jurors McClain, 38, from Irvine, California, slashed her boyfriend repeatedly, beating him to the point of brain damage.
She told how she begged her husband of 12 years to stop the attack for the sake of their children, but he continued and tried to have sex with her, forced her to have sex with the badly injured boyfriend and ordered the castration.
Authorities say the confrontation took place at a leasing office in Irvine where McClain's wife worked.
The wife, who was 31 at the time of the attack had just asked for a divorce, prosecutors said.
The 12-year marriage of McClain and his wife was crumbling, and she became involved with a 23-year-old man for about four months, Orange County Deputy District Attorney John Christl told jurors.
McClain eventually found out and persuaded his wife to let him meet his romantic rival a musician who had moved to California to audition for American Idol.
The woman testified she did not realise her husband was planning an attack when he asked to meet her boyfriend in person one night in December, 2008.
'All I am gonna do is shake his hand,' she said he told her, according to the Register.
But the break room became a makeshift torture chamber, with McClain using two guns and a knife he had brought to the meeting, Christl said.
The pair were quickly overpowered, and forced to undress at knifepoint, prosecutors previously said.
'I am gonna do at least 15 years in jail for this,' she quoted her former husband as saying, the Register reported.
'I am gonna get it while I can' he reportedly said, referring to the sex demand.
The wife, whose voice quivered with emotion as she spoke, saying McClain was relentless in attacking the much smaller, 145-pound boyfriend.
'Look at this white boy,' she quoted McClain as saying, according to the Register.
'You're cheating on me for this? This is what you're leaving me for?'
She told her how boyfriend seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, and screamed with pain as he was beaten.
The woman told the court her boyfriend did not try and resist, but McClain beat and slashed her when she tried to shield her boyfriend of a few months.
She said McClain gave her a gun and demanded she shoot either him or the boyfriend.
She told the court, that her choice to aim the gun at him, after aiming it in a vague direction, further enraged McClain and he beat both of them with butt of the gun, the jury heard.
McClain then forcibly sodomized the wife and used a knife to chop off her hair, before forcing her into a car, prosecutors said.
The man was found hours later and had virtually every bone in his face broken, Christl said.
He suffered brain damage and needed four months of rehabilitation to learn how to walk and talk.
'He couldn't remember what happened,' Christl said. 'He thought he was in a car accident.'
McClain's defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Darren Thompson, told the jury his client had no intention of hurting anyone but snapped when he saw his wife come to the aid of her lover.
Thompson claimed his client's brain 'was on total shut down'.
'At some point he lost it,' Thompson said. 'He completely lost it.'
If jurors find McClain guilty of crimes that include torture, kidnapping and sexual assault, the trial will enter a second phase when the jury must decide if he was legally sane on the night of September 28, 2008.
McClain has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Wearing gray slacks, a striped shirt and a white skull cap, he looked at the graphic photos taken after the attacks but showed no response.
Christl said investigators found bloodied clothing, a folding knife and guns that tied McClain to the crimes.
McClain's wife was the first witness called by the prosecution and she recounted her marriage with her former husband, saying he was extremely jealous and she learned to walk with her head down so she wouldn't meet eyes with another man.
'He said that he took marriage very seriously,' she said as tears welled in her eyes. 'He said that if I ever cheated on him I would be nubbed away because he would cut all my limbs off.'
Read more:
Wife of former sheriff deputy tells of horror when he tried to force her to 'castrate her boyfriend after two hours torturing the pair' | Mail Online
i'm going to do this to my husband
and we're the "emotional and unstable" ones....
when she wasnt even a lesbian or bi
