But the judge himself said her story sounded unlikely. Kathryn Ellis is insistent and consistent in the face of accusations she murdered her husband, Robert. The 49-year-old says she had no reason to kill the man she married 23 years before he was shot to death in September 2012.
"I was a very happy stay-at-home mom with a wonderful husband and a wonderful son," said Kathryn Ellis. "And there's nothing in the world that would make me want to do anything to disrupt that on the night of her husband's death, Ellis told investigators the couple heard an intruder while lying in bed."
Her husband got up, loaded her gun, and went out to check the living room. Next thing she knew, Ellis said she heard a popping sound. She wandered out of the bedroom herself, saw Robert dead on the couch and called 911. She gave the same story on the witness stand Monday, denying that she was actually the one to pull the trigger.
"This is beyond my worst nightmare and no, I can't imagine even hurting him, much less what happened," Ellis said. Ellis said it was just a coincidence that she sought out extra life insurance on her husband a couple months earlier.
Before Ellis testified, the defense attorney asked for some of the charges to be dismissed.
But evidence showed her husband was lying down when at least two of the gunshots hit him.
And when the defense asked for charges dismissed, the judge said her explanation requires jurors to believe a complicated scenario where Bob Ellis saw the intruder in the living room, walked to the opposite side of a couch, lost the gun to the intruder, and laid on the couch before he was killed.
"That scenario is certainly, on the state of the evidence, pretty unlikely," said Judge Kent Hamlin. "And the more likely scenario is that he was shot while he was lying on the couch and that that was planned."
As she wrapped up her side of the story, Ellis was trying to explain why she left out certain details when she talked to detectives last September.
