Ruth Anne Maddox told her coworkers at the Shakopee Valley News that she was filing for a divorce and that it was going to be difficult.
She brought to work a locked steel box and showed coworkers where the keys were, saying she wanted them to know.
That box was turned over to police after Maddox was slain in November 2008 in her Prior Lake home. It contained sexually explicit e-mails that her estranged husband wrote, and he knew about them, prosecutors said Tuesday during opening statements in the trial of Charles "Tony" Maddox Jr. 46. Those e-mails may have been what triggered the violence, prosecutors say.
He's charged with second-degree murder in the death of the 45-year-old weekly newspaper reporter.
Defense attorney Fred Bruno told jurors that the real flashpoint was custody of the couple's two dogs, and that an irate Ruth Anne had gone after Tony by using a screwdriver and small knife to pick her way into a locked room during an argument.
Bruno said Tony kicked the door and it hit Ruth Anne, who fell down some stairs. The door came off and he threw that on her. Ruth Anne got up, knife in hand, Bruno said, so Tony put one knee on the arm with the knife and choked her.
She stopped moving right away, the lawyer said. Bruno claimed the door killed her and that Tony panicked.
Prosecutor Tanya O'Brien said Ruth Anne's body, wrapped in a sleeping bag and tent in her garage, had many injuries, including a crushed neck that left her struggling to breathe for three or four minutes before dying.
