Raven Abaroa's family remained at his side while he kept his head down and looked away from the screen. Prosecutors accuse him of stabbing his pregnant wife to death in their home on Durham's Ferrand Drive on April 26, 2005.
Abaroa called 911 and told an operator he believed his 25-year-old wife had been shot, and that he found her after returning from a soccer game. The couple's 6-month-old son was in the home at the time of the killing, but was not harmed.
Jurors have heard that 911 call and heard from Janet's mother. She testified that she did not know of any physical abuse in the marriage, but that her daughter said Raven verbally abused her when he was feeling down.
Abaroa's defense team maintains police botched the investigation and focused on him from the beginning. In his opening statement, defense attorney Amos Tyndall told jurors that a blood stain on a door frame of the Abaroa home contained a DNA mixture matching Janet and another person, a fingerprint in the home that has never been matched and there was a bloody footprint at the crime scene that belongs to a shoe Abaroa didn't own.
On the witness stand Tuesday, a crime scene investigator said the footprint was later matched to an emergency worker who came to the home right after Abaroa called 911.
The trial is expected to last several weeks. While Janet was murdered in 2005, Abaroa wasn't arrested until 2010. After the murder, he moved to Utah and then Idaho.
In past interviews with ABC11, members of Janet's family have said she told them Raven wanted out of the marriage, that he had had multiple affairs.
Tyndall told jurors in his opening statement the couple had been separated for a time and Raven had admitted to being unfaithful. Tyndall also told jurors about Abaroa's arrest prior to the murder on an embezzlement charge. He pleaded guilty to taking shoes from his former employer to sell them and pocket the money. Tyndall called it a "bad decision" and said the couple was having money problems.
Tyndall said all that does not add up to his client being a murderer.
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