In the weeks before she fatally stabbed Gerald Dawson, Karen Rodrigue was living life as she had for years: drinking regularly and smoking cocaine every few days, whenever she and her partner, Danny McGinnis, could afford it.

On June 16, 2004, the two had started drinking early in the day and picked up a half-gram of rock cocaine from a dealer at the Capital Hotel in downtown Whitehorse.

By late afternoon, the coke and the beers were gone, and the couple headed out from their place in the Alpine Apartments to try to find another hit.

"We had maybe $15," Rodrigue told a judge and jury in Yukon Supreme Court on Tuesday, testifying in her own defence against a charge of second-degree murder

"Knowing some of the coke dealers ... we thought someone might front it for us."

A half-gram of rock cocaine goes for between $40 and $50 in Whitehorse, according to Rodrigue, so they needed to find someone to lend them the money, or a dealer who would take an IOU.

After some fruitless cruising of local bars and hotels where dealers and users hang out, McGinnis decided to go home.

Rodrigue stayed downtown. She told the court she had given up on getting any cocaine, but hoped to find someone who would lend her enough money for a six-pack and some tobacco.

"I said (to McGinnis), 'if worst comes to worst, I'll just call Gerald and borrow some money from him,'" Rodrigue said.

Dawson and Rodrigue were friends, she testified, and the 64-year-old man would regularly help out Rodrigue; lending her money, staking her in bingo, giving her rides and even setting up a phone line for her apartment on his Northwstel Inc. account. He didn't approve of her drug use, she said, but was always supportive.

Rodrigue went to the 2-0-2 Lounge, she said, where she spent her last $15 on three bottles of Canadian. After that, friends at the bar bought her drinks but she still couldn't find anyone to front her some cash.

At around 11:45 p.m., she called Dawson from the pay phone outside the bar. She asked him to lend her some money.

"He said he was coming down to pick me up," she said. Fifteen minutes later, too late for off-sales, Dawson arrived.

"I got in the car...and he asked if I could go up to the McIntyre subdivision to sell some T3s (prescription painkillers)."

The two drove from downtown to McIntyre and then to Granger, attempting to sell the pills, but no one was buying, Rodrigue said, so they headed back to Dawson's home in Marwell.

"He said he had beer at his place," she recalled. "He said he had to go to the bank to get money for tobacco."

They stopped at the Royal Bank on Fourth Avenue at Main Street, where a security camera captured the image of Dawson's silver Chevrolet Lumina pulling up to the building. A bank slip showing a $20-withdrawl from Dawson's account at approximately 12:20 a.m. was submitted as evidence last week.

They made one more stop at Tags convenience store on Fourth, where Dawson bought a pouch of tobacco and a pack of rolling papers.

About 10 minutes later, they were at Dawson's place. He invited Rodrigue in, she cracked a beer, rolled a cigarette and asked if her host had any marijuana.

"I said I was going to smoke the joint and have the beer before heading home," she told the court.

In the meantime, Dawson went to his bedroom to watch TV, leaving Rodrigue alone in the kitchen.

"I call out to him to give me a ride home," she said. "He said no because he was in bed."

At this point, Rodrigue said, she was "really, really high 'cause of the joint I smoked and the two beer.

"I was getting kinda frustrated because I wanted a ride home," she testified.

"I said, 'Well, Gerald, I'll just lay on this cot... will you wake me up in a few hours and give me a ride home?

"And," she added, "no hanky-panky.'"

Rodrigue said she took off her shoes and jeans (she was wearing leggings underneath) and climbed into the small empty bed in Dawson's room.

Sometime later - Rodrigue said she had no idea how long - she awoke to Dawson pulling at her arm.

Up until this point in her testimony, Rodrigue had maintained a certain decorum, but in describing the next hour of her life, the expletives flowed freely.

"I said, 'What the f--- are you trying to do? I'm not going to lay with you!'"

She said she stood up and Dawson grabbed her and threw her down on his own bed.

"I realized he was trying to get my leggings off," she told the court, tears breaking through her words.

"I was trying to get my arms free, I was trying to get him off of me. And then I could feel him inside of me and I was screaming and asking him to stop.

"I think I recall him saying, 'Oh, you want it' or something like that...but I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying."

He eventually got off of her and left the room, she said, although she didn't know after how long or why.

"I was screaming at him, 'What the f--- is wrong with you? Do you realize you just raped me? ...I could report this.'

"He said, 'Go ahead and report me; no one's going to believe a crack whore like you.'" He was absolutely calm, Rodrigue said, and snickering, "like it was funny or something."

Rodrigue said she followed him into the kitchen, still screaming at her attacker, and went to the fridge for another beer.

"Why did you get another beer?" Crown counsel David McWhinnie asked in his cross-examination.

"I don't know," Rodrigue replied.

"You were angry?"

"Well, yeah. This guy is supposed to be my friend and he raped me and then he's acting like it's a big joke....He was saying, 'You can't get everything for free, Karen.'"

Dawson was on the opposite side of the room, with his back to her when Rodrigue put down her drink, slid a knife out from a knife block at her side, crossed the room on stockinged feet and plunged the knife into Dawson's back.

"Why did you stab him?" McWhinnie asked.

"Because I wanted him to feel the same pain I was feeling," she replied. "I didn't mean to kill him."

She said she remembers him saying, "What are you trying to do, kill me?" and then he fell to the floor, unconscious.

"I ran and put my jeans on. I was calling, 'Gerald, Gerald'.... I just knew that I had stabbed him."

She thought he was dead, she told the court, and was even more panicked than she had been immediately after the alleged rape.

"I dragged his body into the back room and threw a blanket over him .... I didn't know what was going on from one minute to the next."

Then, she said, she wiped up the pool of blood from the kitchen floor, grabbed Dawson's rifle from the bedroom, put her bloody socks into a plastic bag along with the knife, took the beer from the fridge, the keys from the counter and fled with Dawson's car.

But not before locking the front door, placing a piece of plywood and a log in front of it and leaving a note which read, "In B.C. Back in two weeks. Gerald."

She said she remembers driving past the Raven Recycling Centre off Industrial Road and dumping the bag containing her socks and the knife, and then she blacked out.

"When I came to, I was at home, calling to Danny to let me in."

For the next 10 days, Rodrigue went on a drug and alcohol binge fuelled, she said, by fear.

She did not tell anyone what she had done but returned once to Dawson's house to exchange the silver Lumina for his blue one and to take two

chainsaws from the dead man's shed.

She pawned one of the saws and her partner sold the other. The money from both went towards more cocaine.

She found a gas card in the blue car, she said, and used it to fill the tank and two jerry cans, both of which were also sold for drug money.

On June 27, a few hours after discovering Dawson's naked corpse, Whitehorse RCMP arrested Rodrigue and McGinnis. They were still driving

Dawson's car, they were still in town and they were still high.

Rodrigue admitted to killing Dawson, but pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder because "I did not intend to kill him."

Rodrigue was the last witness to be called in the case, and the only one called by the defence counsel.

The five-woman, seven-man jury will hear both sides' closing arguments tomorrow morning and will begin deliberations on Friday.