Prosecutor: Winter Springs woman shot her husband, hoping to collect $200,000 in life insurance: Kimberly Boone, 44, also is accused of trying to kill her husband in a fire [The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.]

July 13--SANFORD -- A prosecutor today told jurors that a Winter Springs woman on trial for attempted murder was an embezzler, desperate to find hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay back her boss.

Last year, Kimberly Boone, 44, shot her husband as he peered into their garage.

She was beneficiary of two life insurance policies worth $100,000 each, said Assistant State Attorney Tom Hastings, and that's the reason, Hastings said, that she shot him that day, March 29, 2009.

Another reason: When she had tried to kill him in a house fire three months earlier, a neighbor had pulled him to safety, according to Hastings.

Boone is charged with two counts of attempted murder, one for the shooting, a separate one for the fire. She's on trial this week for the shooting. Testimony in that case began today.

She's to be tried later, in front of another judge, in the arson case.

Defense attorney Francis Wesley "Buck" Blankner Jr. told jurors today that the shooting was an accident, that Boone mistook her husband for an intruder.

She was arrested, Blankner said, because she lied to authorities when they first questioned her. Initially, she told them it was an intruder who shot her husband.

In an email to her boss, as she negotiated repayment of what she'd stolen, Kimberly Boone described herself as suffering from bi-polar disorder and wrote that she'd been under the care of a psychiatrist for more than two years.

Hastings this morning laid out for jurors the state's theory about the shooting: Kimberly Boone had been caught stealing from her boss, was fired and had promised to repay him if he didn't go to the authorities.

One month after she was fired, she tried poisoning or sedating her husband, Robert Boone, with her Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety medication, Hastings said.

Moments later she set the couple's home on fire while her husband was napping, Hastings said.

A neighbor saw her hauling belongings from her house to her SUV that morning. She then left. Within moments, that same neighbor heard Robert Boone call for help and pulled him through a window.

Three months later, Robert Boone was shot.

In a 911 call that morning, Robert Boone told a dispatcher that his wife had just shot him, but she can be heard in the background correcting him, saying it was an intruder who shot him.

The first two times law enforcement officers asked her about the shooting that morning, Kimberly Boone told them the shooter was a burglar, but later that day, she told them that she had opened fire and that it was an accident.

Hastings told jurors that she pulled the trigger of a .357 Magnum three times. She had a concealed weapons permit.

Seminole County deputies searched the house for evidence of an intruder, Hastings told jurors. They found none. What they found was that someone had jimmied a garage window screen from the inside.

Rene Stutzman can be reached at [email protected] or 407-650-6394.

To see more of The Orlando Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.OrlandoSentinel.com.

Copyright (c) 2010, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544)