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 today.

One son is the prosecution’s star witness, another her main defender.