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For the last couple of weeks, a Toronto judge and jury have been getting a glimpse into what life may have been like for Dong Huang, may he rest in peace.

The body of the 40-year-old was found almost five years ago in the basement apartment in Scarborough he shared with his wife, Xiu Jin Teng.

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With his wrists and ankles bound, and a puncture wound suggestive of a needle on his arm, Huang died of ligature strangulation — and not, as Teng first said, a heart attack.

Now 40, she is pleading not guilty to first-degree murder, and, unusually, is representing herself at trial — occasionally with skill, but more reliably, shrilly.

Her voice rising occasionally to a shout, a consistent feature of Teng’s self-defence is her hectoring and berating of Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian MacDonnell. Tuesday, for instance, MacDonnell attempted to ask Teng if, now that Crown prosecutors had closed their case, she was intending to call evidence or testify.