Lust, greed and obsession consumed former Prescott councillor Nancy Lane and led her to kill her own husband, Crown prosecutor Robert Morrison alleged during his opening statement Monday at the woman's murder trial.

Art Lane, a 61-year-old labour legend, had been at death's door.

Nancy Lane, flat broke and consumed with passion for a man described by the Crown as a "Dominican gigolo and con man," sent her husband to the reaper, a court heard.

"She needed money to preserve her dreams," Morrison told a jury.

"Art Lane needed to be dead."

Nancy Lane, 55, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in her husband's Oct. 8, 2009 death.

The nurse and former municipal politician had four kids with Art Lane but the marriage had been "functionally over for years," Morrison said.

Tax returns filed in 2005 said they were separated. They still lived together, but slept apart.

By 2008 she had taken a lover half her age in the Dominican Republic, Morrison said.

She was besotted with him, writing to one friend on the eve of a visit that "in a few days I will be in heaven."

A forensic accountant will testify that the Lane finances had reached "complete desperation" in 2009 and "financial armageddon" in the months before Art Lane's death, Morrison said.

Art Lane had a $200,000 life insurance plan and she was the sole beneficiary. What's more, if he went into the light she would be able to collect on his pension.

"She needed him dead right there to save her dream," Morrison said. "She was obsessively in love."

On Oct. 6, 2009 she returned from the Dominican. Art Lane picked her up in Montreal.

Two days later his son looked in and found him frail and failing, drinking water from a backyard pool.

Morrison said Art Lane had grown unresponsive. He was drenched in sweat and barely breathing.

She didn't call 911. She did laundry, Morrison said.

When she was done, she returned upstairs and found her husband dead. She grabbed a stethoscope to make sure and still didn't call 911, Morrison said.

She then burned pill bottles, he alleged.

Lane said her dead husband was a palliative care patient, whose death was expected after three heart attacks, a perforated bowel and diabetes.

But after she learned an autopsy would take place she claimed it was suicide.

"The story immediately changed," Morrison said.

Toxicologists would find traces of drugs in his system that could have reduced his heart rate and blood pressure.

The pills were water soluble too, making it easy for her -- a Brockville mental hospital nurse -- to slip them into his water, the court heard.

And in the two days between her return and his death, phone records show 33 calls between their home and the Dominican Republic.

"This crime was founded on love," Morrison said.

"And equally importantly obsession."

The trial continues Tuesday.