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| Catherine Kieu is accused of cutting her husband penis |
The estranged husband of a woman charged with
severing his penis said it was as though his life ended the evening of the
attack.
"She murdered me that night," the man said
Wednesday on the first day of the trial of Catherine Kieu, 50.
Orange County Deputy District Attorney John Christl
said in his opening statement that Kieu, angry because her husband was dating a
former girlfriend, laced his food with sleeping pills on July 11, 2011, then
tied him to a bed, severed his penis and put it in the garbage disposal.
"I will never have a sex life again," said
the husband, who had surgery that allows him to urinate. The penis could not be
reattached. "My mental state is improving, but it may never be what it was
before," he said.
The man is going only by his first name in court and
is not being named by The Associated Press because of the sexual nature of the
attack.
The husband said he remembered waking tied to the
bed. "All of a sudden I felt a very sharp pain," he said.
In his opening statement, Deputy Public Defender
Frank Bittar told jurors that Kieu's traumatic childhood in war-torn Vietnam
caused mental illness that should prevent her from conviction on the charges of
aggravated mayhem and torture.
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| Catherine Kieu sits next to her attorney, Frank Bittar, before opening statements yesterday |
Bittar said Kieu met the victim at a gym, and after
they married he subjected her to sexual and verbal abuse, and filed for divorce
while they continued to live together in his Garden Grove home.
Prosecutors played audio in court that was captured
by a voice-activated recorder Kieu had hidden in the bedroom, according to
Christl. She is heard yelling "you deserve it" three times before the
attack on the recording.
The 50-year-old, who is being held on $1million bail,
is accused of drugging her 60-year-old husband's tofu with sleeping pills and
tying him to a bed before the attack back in the summer of 2011.
If convicted on all counts she could face life in
prison without parole.
The LA Times reports emergency surgery to reattached
the "mutilated" organ was unsuccessful.
It adds Kieu told officers at the scene her husband
"deserved it".
NBC Los Angeles says the couple had been married for
18 months at the time of the attack and that the unnamed husband had filed for
divorce two months earlier, but the pair were continuing to live together in
Garden Grove.
During a court hearing in 2011, Dr Joel Gelman, who
heads UC Irvine's Center for Reconstructive Urology, didn't comment on the
victim specifically but said a severed penis is "a terrible loss and it's
the hardest thing, in our specialty, to deal with surgically."
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| Catherine has been married to her husband for 18 months |
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| Catherine Kieu is being held on a $1M Bail |
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| Catherine Kieu has been married for 18 months with her husband |
