She also admitted to having an adulterous affair with a television repairman in the United States.

Kissel said she had searched the Internet for ways to kill herself. In explaining why spyware installed on her laptop had picked up that she had typed, ``Sleeping pills ... overdose medication causing heart attack ... drug overdose,'' at the end of August, 2003, the accused said it had been research for ways of taking her own life.

Kissel, 41, is accused of serving her former Merrill Lynch banker husband, Robert Kissel, a pink milkshake laced with sedatives, which left him unconscious at the foot of their bed as she bludgeoned him to death with a heavy metal ornament on November 2, 2003.

She told a doctor and the police at the time she was assaulted by her husband when she refused him sex.

His decomposing body was found November 7, wrapped in a rug at the couple's Parkview residential complex.

``I was feeling not great about myself. I typed this information for me about `sleeping pills, overdose.' It was something I considered. I was pretty desperate,'' she said, ``and, with everything that had happened, not wanting to face what was going on in my marriage.

``The `causing heart attack' was something I thought about. If I was going to do something like this, of taking pills, I wouldn't want my children to be affected - of going through the knowledge of their mother committing suicide. To feel the loss of their mother caused by a heart attack was something I wanted to do for their protection.

``It was an out for me from being humiliated.''

Earlier that year, while escaping the SARS epidemic with her children, she had sat in her car in Vermont with her garage doors closed and the engine running, crying, ``but then got scared'' of leaving her children, she said.

At that moment, she said, she understood what her cousin had meant when she said in a note that she always wanted to commit suicide in the peaceful surroundings of Vermont.

Her cousin was found dead in a car outside their previous Vermont home, said the accused.

According to Kissel's testimony, a little over two months after that incident in the garage, she entered into a relationship with television repairman Michael Del Priore which she said was based on communication, in contrast to one based on physical and sexual abuse.

Del Priore wired the house with entertainment and security systems, said the accused. She met him in 2000, but it was not until 2003, when she stayed longer in Vermont with her children, that she really came to know him, she said.

In mid-June, they spoke about tattoos, something she always wanted, but her husband had thought ``corporate bankers' wives'' should not have.

Del Priore took her to a tattoo parlor, she said, and at dinner after, she opened up to him about the stress of trying to lead a perfect life as a banker's wife.

``He was very open and honest to me about his childhood,'' she said.

Del Priore claimed his mother was abused by his father and that he had alcoholics in the family. He noticed that ``this summer you look like s...'' compared with previous years and had ``the same look as his mother did'' which concerned him, said the accused.

``I broke down and cried,'' she said. ``It was the first time anybody ever stepped forward and confronted me on an issue that scares a lot of people. People look at you and see change, and they don't really want to know.''

She felt she could finally open up to someone about the ``little expatriate world'' where people are ``more interested in what you're wearing and how big your diamond ring is and your car.''

From Del Priore, there were ``no questions, no `do this, do that.' It was just basically letting me talk,'' she said.

The relationship continued mostly through phone calls and letters. It involved three sexual encounters, she said.

Tuesday, the accused took to the witness box for the second day in a packed courtroom, saying how she thought ``giving in'' to the sodomy, the violence and the restrictive lifestyle was easier than resisting.

She spoke of making ``sacrifices,'' subjecting herself to her husband's obsessive control and aggressive sexual whims, because she wanted to remain ``Mrs Kissel,'' mother of her children.

During a skiing holiday in Whistler, Canada in 2002, the accused said her husband was ``embarrassed'' that she would not ski, despite the fact that she thought looking after their sick two-year-old son was more important.

On Christmas Eve, her husband thought she was fussing over the Christmas tree for too long.

``He grabbed me from downstairs and pulled me upstairs, because he wanted what he wanted. And I let him.

``And then I went back downstairs and finished with the presents,'' she said, which angered him more because he had told her not to.

``You're not ... listening to me. I told you not to ... touch the tree and you did,'' he said through clenched teeth, slamming her against the wall, said the accused.

A day or two later, a similar argument erupted about her failing to listen to him, resulting in the accused waving her finger at him. ``So he hit me. And I fell down the flight of steps and hit my head on the bottom,'' said Kissel.

When the victim visited his family in Vermont in May 2003, the sexual violence grew worse as the banker had to work around the clock, using cocaine to accommodate different time zones.

The sex was at ``an instant'' whenever it suited his work and his mood swings. The accused said she would just walk by his desk, ``and he'd grab me.''

Kissel continues her testimony today before Justice Michael Lunn.