A Plano, Texas, woman accused of trying to kill her fiance is on trial this week for attempted murder.
Vicky Renee Miller allegedly tried to kill Paul Dwayne Key in Nov., 2011. She dated Key for years after meeting him at Lipstick Cabaret, the Dallas topless nightclub where she was a dancer.
Prosecutors began testimony Tuesday morning with 911 calls.
"She tried to kill me for breaking up with her," Key can be heard saying from a stranger's cellphone at a Plano business.
Key told the Collin County jury that he fled Miller's apartment after she, her teenage son, Francisco James Hurtado, and his friend, Dunkan Thomas Boyce, coordinated an assault when Key returned to Miller's home to pick up his belongings.
He said he was strangled from behind with an extension cord after he sat down on her couch. The cord was "pulled tight enough I could not breathe" and he believed he was about to die, Key said.
Eventually, he worked free from the stranglehold, moving the extension cord under his lip, he testified. Hurtado then tried to hold a pillow over his mouth so he could not breathe, Key said. Soon after, he was struck over the head with a frying pan, he said.
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Key said he was hospitalized after the assault with 12 staples in his head.
Key testified that he had broken up with Miller by phone earlier in the week after several failed attempts to move into her home and legally marry. He said he proposed within 30 minutes of meeting her at Lipstick Cabaret.
He said he had "drained" his savings and retirement accounts to support Miller during the relationship, buying her two separate engagement rings, providing her with $2,000 per month in support and giving her a down payment for her home.
Plano police originally arrested Key on suspicion of family violence on Nov. 22, 2011, after Hurtado and Boyce called 911 and told police that Key had assaulted Miller.
If convicted on the second-degree felony charge of attempted murder, Miller faces up to 20 years in prison.
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