Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Melanie Engleman talks with her attorney, Chris Kowalczuk, on Tuesday during the first day of her trial in Roanoke Circuit Court.

Roanoke prosecutors contend that 16-year-old Melanie Elaine Engleman coldly plotted to stab her ex-boyfriend to death when she discovered he was cheating on her.

Engleman's defense attorney counters that William Christopher Linn was violent and abusive, and that his client stabbed Linn only after he had already grabbed her in a headlock and had begun to punch her.

A Roanoke jury heard those sharply contrasting opening statements Tuesday as Engleman's trial began. Now 17, she is charged with first-degree murder in the June 2 stabbing that killed 19-year-old Linn.

Roanoke prosecutor Alice Ekirch said in her address to the jury that Engleman became jealous and enraged when she learned that Linn was cheating on her with another teenage girl.

She and two friends went to the girl's house on Daleton Avenue to confront her, and Engleman brought a steak knife with her. Linn, who was in the house, left out the back. A few minutes later, the girl, Tai Reid, heard someone screaming for help.

She opened her front door to find Linn bleeding from a stab wound to the chest. He died the next morning in a hospital, but before he did, he told police that Engleman had stabbed him.

Ekirch called the case a classic instance of premeditated murder and told the jury that the defense would conduct a "trial within a trial" to attack Linn's character and distract them from Engleman's guilt.

"Chris was no Romeo, but the defendant was no Juliet," Ekirch said.

Defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk said Engleman admits to the stabbing but maintains she went to Reid's house solely to confront her. He said Reid and Linn had trash-talked and taunted his client.

He said Engleman herself will testify that when no one answered the door, she and the two girls began to leave, but Linn came out from behind the house and began yelling at them. He asked Engleman to come talk to him away from the others on a nearby Roanoke street, and when she did, he attacked her. She stabbed him once to defend herself, he said, and made panicked calls to Reid and to 911 afterward.

Engleman stole the knife from a store just before she went to Reid's house -- but she did that "just in case" because she was afraid of what Linn might do, Kowalczuk said.

He pledged to the jury that they would hear about previous instances of Linn's violent, manipulative behavior.

Engleman and Linn met when both attended Rivermont School, which specializes in teaching students with psychological or emotional difficulties that keep them from participating in regular classrooms.

Linn had off-again, on-again relationships with both Engleman and Reid, who testified that she started dating Linn in March 2008. He would sneak into her house while her mother was at work and they would smoke marijuana. Once, Reid's mother, Aleshia Howard, caught him in the house and had him arrested.

Howard testified that Engleman spoke to her on the phone, saying that if her daughter didn't stay away from Linn, "someone's going to pay."

Reid said on the stand that the day of the stabbing, Engleman called her and told her over the phone, "Bitch, you know I'll slit your throat. Why are you messing with Chris?" Before she arrived at Reid's house, she called again and said, "Bitch, I'm on the way," Reid testified.

Kowalczuk challenged Reid's account, asserting that she hasn't been consistent about the things she claims Engleman said. He declared several of Reid's statements to be outright lies as he cross-examined her. He also accused Reid of downplaying her own role in the trash-talking that led to the confrontation.

Reid admitted that she effectively told Engleman to "bring it on" in a phone conversation the day before the stabbing, but denied being combative in any other way. She said she didn't actually expect Engleman to come to her house.

Ekirch played the recording of the 911 call Reid made when she found Linn bleeding on the porch. Linn could be heard speaking in the background, and when his mother heard his voice in the courtroom, she doubled over and cried.

The trial, scheduled to last three days, resumes today.