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Photo by Michele Mandel/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Outside court, Ray, 62, explains she was “mentally fragile” at the time: she was going through a messy break-up with her third husband Michael Khavkin-Ray, her assets had just been frozen in family court and she was so depressed that she was suicidal, hadn’t slept for days and was overdosing on prescription pills.

The police, she complains, did a hasty job — their investigation began Dec. 3, 2013, and she was arrested Dec. 9 — and should have spent more time looking into their backgrounds. The police reports show a history of domestic disputes and that her ex-husband has a lengthy criminal record that includes fraud as well as “believed to be associated” with the Russian Mob.

Michael Khavkin was a former tenant who, she says, “charmed me in my solitude” after the death of her second husband, lawyer Stanley Kazman.

During their brief marriage, he took her last name — and when they divorced in 2012, Ray claims he wanted much more — after running through her money, he now wanted half the proceeds from the sale of her home.

And it appeared the family court was going to side in his favour.

Both had called police on each other — she alleged that he’d threatened to kill her, stolen her car and violated his conditional sentence by driving despite a suspended license. He complained she’d changed the locks on him.

Ray contends her arrest was all a set-up for monetary gain by her ex and their former mutual friend, Viktor Sokolovski, a Richmond Hill judo instructor. The friend told police she’d asked him to find her a hitman. She insists she wasn’t serious about wanting to kill her ex-husband. “It was just an expression.”