Woman describes attack at ex-husband's trial

On the night she was stabbed, Patricia Battisti testified Friday, she had pulled her red convertible into the driveway of her Franklin Square home, fetched shopping bags from the car's trunk and walked to the front door.

"Someone put a hand over my mouth, put a sharp instrument to the back of my neck and told me if I tell anyone, he'd kill my children," Battisti told jurors in the attempted-murder trial of her ex-husband, Anthony Battisti.

As the attacker pressed the sharp object into her neck, Patricia Battisti said, she fell into the door, knocking it wide open. Then she fell onto the floor of the house.

Patricia Battisti said her son, Damian Perez, and her boyfriend, Brian Dashner, chased and caught the attacker, whom police later identified as Timothy Gersbeck, 39, of Levittown. Police found a screwdriver, its tip sharpened like a pencil, in the area where Gersbeck was stopped and arrested.

Patricia Battisti was treated and released on Jan. 24, 2009, the day after the attack. She was given medication to relieve her pain and headache.

During her testimony in Nassau County Court, Patricia Battisti, 46, sat several feet from her ex-husband and avoided making eye contact with him. He is the father of the younger two of her four children.

Prosecutor Carolyn Kelly says Anthony Battisti, 43, a New York City police officer from Franklin Square, hired a hit man to kill his former wife because he was tired of paying alimony and fighting for custody of his children. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree attempted murder and second-degree conspiracy.

Battisti's lawyer, Stephen Scaring of Garden City, has told jurors that Gersbeck acted alone and then ratted out Battisti to get a lesser punishment for himself. The two men knew each other, with Gersbeck doing odd jobs for Battisti and helping to fix up broken-down race cars.

Under cross-examination Friday, Patricia Battisti admitted that on several earlier occasions, she said the attacker had threatened to harm her son and daughter, not her "children" as she told jurors.

The defense contends that if Anthony Battisti had ordered the hit on his ex-wife, he would have alerted Gersbeck to be on the lookout for her older son, Damian Perez, then 20 and living with his mother. The two younger children were with Anthony Battisti on the night of the attack.In other testimony earlier Friday, Gersbeck said he and Anthony Battisti had talked extensively about how to kill Patricia Battisti and the best way to commit the crime, but that he didn't know what she looked like.

Gersbeck said Anthony Battisti told him where his ex-wife lived and worked, and gave him the location of her gym and a description of her car.

Under cross-examination, Gersbeck said Anthony Battisti did not provide a photograph of Patricia Battisti.

"He never showed you a picture of her, right?" Scaring asked Gersbeck.

"Yes," Gersbeck replied.

The trial resumes Tuesday before Nassau County Court Judge John Kase.