Woman Denies She Planned to Kill Ex-Fiance : Crime: On trial for attempted murder, Jeannette Smith testifies she was so distraught over breakup with veterinarian Jeffrey Saur that she considered suicide.

As Jeannette Smith sat in the back of a Ventura police cruiser on the side of the highway, her hands cuffed behind her back, she noticed Jeffrey Saur was drenched in blood.

Saur, a Ventura veterinarian and Smith’s fiance, had been stabbed more than 30 times.

But while she was angry that Saur had canceled their marriage plans and evicted her from his home, Smith testified Monday that she could not recall stabbing him repeatedly in the head, back and other areas of the body last September.

Testifying for a second straight day at her attempted murder trial in Ventura County Superior Court, the unemployed travel agent spoke passionately about her relationship with the 41-year-old animal doctor.

Smith, 31, said she loved Saur and believed he loved her for most of their yearlong affair. But the relationship soured and, on Sept. 3, Saur moved her belongings out of his home.

Smith did not believe she could go on without her fiance and contemplated suicide, she testified.

“In my heart, in my mind, there was something inside of him that still loved me, even if he couldn’t get it out,” Smith testified.

On the morning of the stabbing, she and Saur unloaded her belongings at a storage facility in Camarillo. On the way back to his home, she said she forced him to pull off the road on eastbound California 126, near the Ventura Freeway.

From under the passenger seat of her car, she pulled a 4 3/4-inch paring knife and began inflicting wounds on herself, she said. She plunged the knife into her own abdomen, she testified, but said she had no recollection of stabbing her former lover.

“Did you ever intend to kill Dr. Saur?” Smith was asked by her lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Donna Forry.

“My God, no,” she said. In fact, she added, she had willed all her possessions to Saur just a few days earlier.

Saur has given different testimony in the case. The pet doctor said he fell in love with Smith while treating her cat. After leaving the pet clinic where they met, Saur said he began dating Smith and later proposed marriage.

But the relationship fell apart after Smith began displaying emotional problems, accusing him of not loving her, he testified. He broke it off.

Saur testified that during the violent episode, she first stabbed him in the shoulder, stabbed herself and then wounded him at least another 30 times.

On the stand Monday, Smith testified that violence was not on her mind during the ride back from dropping off her belongings. She said she jumped onto Saur’s lap while he was driving just to get his attention, hoping that he would pull the car over and talk.

She told the jury that a day earlier, she had pleaded with him not to break up with her. She told him she would change her ways and that she would make him love her once again.

Why, her attorney asked, was their relationship so important to her?

“He was my family,” she answered. “He was the only man I wanted to share my life with. And I knew I had to move heaven and earth to do something before it was too late.

“There was no other man for me,” Smith said to her attorney, raising her voice emphatically. “In all my 31 years, I had given him what I had given no other man.”

So she said she placed the paring knife in her car before going to his house that one final time to retrieve her belongings. She did not care about her possessions, she said. She either wanted to win his love or kill herself, she testified.

“In my mind, I knew if I couldn’t get through to him, then that was going to be my last day.”

On cross-examination, prosecutor Maeve Fox suggested that Smith planned to stab Saur all along. The prosecutor even got Smith to acknowledge that she owns a book called, “I Hate You. Don’t Leave Me.” The book profiles women with “borderline personality disorders,” including some who end up chasing their spouses with butcher knives, Fox said.

Smith also denied telling police after the incident that, “I put the knife in myself and then I started doing it [stabbing] to him.”

Evidence in the case is expected to wrap up today.