A man repeatedly stabbed his wife and slit her throat while two of their crying children listened to her screams outside the bedroom, a Brisbane court has heard.
Prosecutor Vicki Loury on Tuesday told the Supreme Court a jealous Hasan Abusoud attacked his wife Hoda with two large knives in a bloodied frenzy because she had started seeing another man.
"It was a deliberate act of revenge and retribution," Ms Loury told the jury.
Abusoud, 38, of Slacks Creek, south of Brisbane, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Hoda Abusoud, 33, on November 16, 2005.
Ms Loury said between 6.30am and 7am on the day of her death, Mrs Abusoud had not long returned home from an overnight shift working as a taxi driver when Abusoud grabbed the knives from the kitchen and set upon her in the bedroom.
A post-mortem examination revealed she had been stabbed in the head, neck and back, with two of the wounds penetrating her lungs.
Her injuries also showed she had put her hands up in defence.
"He cut her throat from ear to ear with a sawing action through all the tissues through to the spinal column," Ms Loury told the court.
She said the father told his two boys, aged 12 and 13, to "just stay sleeping" when they awoke to their mother's screams.
Ms Loury said they went and stood outside the bedroom and that while their mother desperately yelled at them to open the door, their father told them not to.
She said he then took the children to school "like nothing happened".
Following calls from concerned family and friends, police forced their way into the estranged couple's home the following day, discovering her mutilated body in the main bedroom.
The court also heard in the weeks before her death the victim told friends she wanted to divorce her husband after at least 15 years of marriage, and that they were only living together for the sake of their children.
Ms Loury said that during a police interview the defendant said his "blood was boiling" after his wife told him she was seeing someone.
The prosecutor said Abusoud admitted to police he remembered being on top of his wife and cutting her throat while the kids were outside crying.
The case continues before Justice Ann Lyons.