"Honey, tell the nice judge Mommy didn't mean to."

ORINDA, Calif. -- In the midst of a bitter divorce, Susan Polk says, she split for Montana, determined to get away from her abusive husband. "I didn't plan on coming back and killing him," she explains from behind a window in the county jail. But kill him she did _ stabbing a paring knife repeatedly into his body in a rage.

She claims she acted in self defense after he tried to stab her with the knife. Prosecutors call it the premeditated action of a violent, delusional woman. Polk, 47, has fired three attorneys and now plans to represent herself in her first-degree murder trial, set to begin Monday. One son is the prosecution's star witness, another her main defender.

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Susan tips her head down at the prospect of cross-examining her son. "We're just going to talk, that's all," she says. "I never planned to murder my husband. He knows that."

Fascinating article. He was her married, older shrink and they started an intimate relationship when she was 16 and he was 42. She is claiming she was abused, emotionally and physically, and that he came after her with the knife when she came to collect her things.

But cross-examining your own children about the death of their father at your hand? I think that may prove emotionally
cumbersome
adjective
1. Difficult to handle because of weight or bulk.
2. Troublesome or onerous.