MOUNT CARROLL – Morgan and Suzanne Hake got drunk and had a fight the night before he shot her, according to testimony Wednesday at his murder trial in Carroll County court.

Hake, 50, who is facing six counts of first-degree murder in the Dec. 5 shooting death, wrote a letter of apology to Suzanne’s mother and stepfather, Mary Lu and Richard Johnson, 3 weeks later. It was read Wednesday by Carroll County Sheriff’s Detective Michael Rannow.

“I’m so sorry for taking her from you and everyone else,” Hake wrote. “I know I deserve to burn in hell, but I beg the Lord for forgiveness.”

The Hakes, who were spending

2 nights in Galena, “drank way too much” and got into an argument in a bar, he wrote. He couldn’t remember what the fight was about.

“We were both very drunk. I don’t say that to put any blame on her. It was what it was,” Hake wrote.

Later, under questioning by State’s Attorney Scott Brinkmeier, daughter Hannah Hake, 20, said her parents lived together in Freeport, and her mom also had a home in Lanark, an easier commute to her job in Sterling.

Late Dec. 4, her dad called and asked her to pick him up at a Galena hotel. He didn’t seem upset, she said, and “during the ride back to Freeport, we had very little conversation.”

She dropped him off about 1 a.m. at the Hakes’ Freeport house, and half an hour later, he called her. That’s when he told her he’d shot her mom three times, Hannah said.

The Hakes’ youngest daughter, Abigail, 18, also testified that her dad also called her from Galena the night of the shooting, asking her for a ride because he and her mother had a fight, and her mom had left him at the hotel.

The next time they spoke, early Dec. 5, on Hannah’s phone, Abigail said “as best she could recall,” her dad told her he’d killed her mother.

The trial, presided over by Judge Val Gunnarsson, resumes at 9 a.m. today.

Hake, represented by Moline-based attorneys Daniel P. Dalton and Nate Nieman, faces 20 to 60 years or up to life in prison if convicted. He is in Carroll County Jail on $5 million bond. He’s also charged with felony possession of a weapon, punishable by 2 to 5 years in prison. That case will be tried separately.