NASHUA – The night in April 2017 that Blake Colella’s department store credit card application was denied, he allegedly blamed a woman for messing up his credit before the two drove to a Nashua apartment in silence.

“We walked in the door, and that’s when it started,” the alleged victim testified Wednesday before a Superior Court jury on the first day of Colella’s trial on numerous charges, which accuse him of carving letters into the woman’s back, strangling her, and holding a knife to her kidney while allegedly threatening to kill her on the spot.

But he also gave her a choice, the woman, at times becoming emotional and occasionally sobbing, said during questioning by Assistant County Attorney Brian Greklek-McKeon, who is prosecuting the case with First Assistant County Attorney Kent Smith.

“He said, ‘I can either break the cat’s neck and make you bury (the body) in the backyard, or brand you for what you are: A liar,'” she said as jurors and about a dozen onlookers listened intently.

But instead, the woman testified, Colella allegedly kicked the cat into the next room, grabbed her by the throat until she couldn’t breathe, then picked up a knife and ordered her to take off her shirt.

“He took the knife … he started carving letters into my back,” the woman said, her voice breaking. Although she indicated Colella was allegedly planning to carve out the word “liar,” he stopped, she said, after the first two letters.

He then allegedly “put the knife to my face … and (allegedly) said, ‘you have no idea how much I want to kill you right now,'” she testified.

“When did he stop?” McKeon asked.

“When I told him to just kill me,” the alleged victim answered.

But Colella’s attorney, Charles Keefe, spent the remaining three hours of Wednesday’s testimony reviewing in great detail the sequence of alleged events, while repeatedly questioning the woman about her responses, many of which, Keefe said, varied from those she gave during direct examination earlier in the day.

At one point, the alleged victim, appearing somewhat exasperated by the detailed nature of Keefe’s questioning of what he called “a woman who changes her story every time she tells it,” told him “I don’t remember every word someone wrote” in reports … I don’t recall the exact order of everything that happened.

But it doesn’t matter, because it all happened,” she added.

The jury of 10 men and four women, including the two alternates, were dismissed for the day shortly after 4 p.m., with instructions to return at 10 a.m. today for the start of the second day of the trial.

Colella, 37, most recently of Lynn, Massachusetts, lived in Nashua with the alleged victim at the time of the alleged assaults and threats. He and the woman married in 2015, and they divorced in May 2018, she testified Wednesday.

The charges Colella faces include two counts of first-degree assault – domestic violence, for allegedly carving letters into the woman’s back; two counts of second-degree assault – domestic violence, for allegedly squeezing the woman’s neck and impeding her ability to breathe; two counts of criminal threatening – domestic violence, for allegedly holding a knife to the woman’s neck and face area “immediately after threatening to ‘cave her face in;'” two counts of cruelty to animals, for allegedly mistreating by kicking and threatening to kill a household pet; and one count of tampering with witnesses or informants, for allegedly purposely inducing the alleged victim to withhold testimony through text messages stating, “my lawyer will eat you alive … all your secrets will come out … I know everything about you,” according to the indictments.

In his opening statement, Smith, the lead prosecutor, told the jury the alleged assaults began on April 19, 2017, when the alleged victim picked him up in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Smith didn’t specify why Colella was in Fall River, but he and McKeon said at a 2018 hearing that Colella had just been released from a Massachusetts prison after serving most of a seven-to-10-year sentence in connection with a 2006 stabbing in Lynn.

“Blake was angry, and (the alleged victim) was scared,” Smith told jurors. “But to say she was scared is an understatement … she was terrified of him.”

Within minutes after she picked Colella up in Fall River, he allegedly “demanded her phone … and went through it, because he suspected her of cheating,” Smith said.

Her explanation of what was on the phone didn’t satisfy Colella, Smith said, and “he began striking her in the face so hard her nose and mouth were bleeding.”

Two days later, the alleged assaults resumed, after the couple returned home from Best Buy.

The alleged victim testified she didn’t call police or otherwise report the allegations because she feared for her life, Smith and the alleged victim said.

But the next day, after “looking at my face in the mirror” and remembering Colella allegedly kicking her cat, she called a local domestic-violence victims support agency, and officials there told her to call police.

Detectives, after interviewing the woman and conducting an investigation, issued a warrant for Colella’s arrest. More than a year passed until he was arrested in Massachusetts on the warrant and returned to Nashua.

Testimony focused also on the two letters the alleged victim said she wrote to the court and to prosecutors, in which she stated in no uncertain terms that she wanted nothing to do with Colella’s case, and would refuse to testify if it went to trial.

“Did you write that letter?” Keefe asked during cross-examination.

“I was told to write it,” she said.

When Keefe asked if she wrote the second letter, the alleged victim responded, “I typed it. I was told to write it. I signed it. I was told to sign it.”

Keefe, noting the letter had been notarized, asked her if she swore it was truthful.

“I swore to my signature,” she said.

The alleged victim also claimed she was “threatened” by prosecutors when she told them she would not testify, even if subpoenaed.

“They told me I would be arrested if I didn’t show up to testify,” she said, referring to Smith.

When Keefe brought forward a packet of screen shots showing numerous text messages exchanged with the alleged victim, Colella and another person in Colella’s family and asked her if she wrote them, she studied the documents briefly.

“These are just small snippets … some don’t even have a time or date stamp,” she said, handing the papers back to Keefe.

“There’s very little context … these make no sense,” she said of the documents, adding that they appear to be “snippets … pieced together.

“I don’t know if these have been verified. I can’t say if they’re real,” the alleged victim told Keefe.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.