Wife recalls going 'up in flames' during attack

It was, a prosecutor said, "one of the most monstrous imaginable crimes."

For Audrey Mabrey, it was the end of her life as she knew it, when she says her estranged husband, Christopher Hanney, doused her in gasoline and threw a lit candle at her.

Hanney, 49, a retired New York police detective, is standing trial on a charge of first-degree attempted murder in the attack on his wife, the mother of their two children, on Nov. 17, 2009, in his Apollo Beach home.

His attorney, public defender Jennifer Spradley, told jurors to reserve judgment until all the facts are in. Hanney, she said, will testify in the trial.

Mabrey had moved to an apartment in Brandon in preparation for their divorce. On the day of the attack, she stopped by their former marital home to do some work before going to classes at Hillsborough Community College.

Mabrey, 29, testifying as the first witness in Hanney's trial, told jurors she called her former boyfriend in Kansas, and then she went for a jog. And when she returned, Hanney was unexpectedly inside waiting for her.

"As soon as I entered the home, Christopher was standing right where the living room and dining room meet with a butcher knife," she said.

He was naked and his head was shaved, she said.

She said she turned to leave, but he "bum rushed" her and scooped her up.

"When he first grabbed me, he actually cut my finger with the knife," she said. "I just remember seeing the blood hit the floor and him grabbing me immediately and taking me into the garage."

He pushed her face-down onto a blanket that was on the carpeted floor and, she said, put the knife to her throat and began trying to rape her.

She said he got up and walked over to the washer and dryer and began questioning the paternity of their son, suggesting her former boyfriend was the true father.

She said she pleaded with Hanney and tried to pacify him, telling him she loved him and wanted to get back together. She said when he brought up the paternity issue, she hesitated, and asked him to give her a minute to think, even though she had no doubt he was the father.

Then she reminded him they had planned for this child and said he knew he was the father. She said he told her he was going to give her one chance. She was to tell him who the father was or he was going to "cut me like a f------ pig."

Mabrey said Hanney pulled out her cellphone and said he was going to call the ex-boyfriend and "force him to listen to me f------die." But there was no answer.

Hanney then grabbed a hammer and hit her on the head four times, she said. It hurt and drew blood, but she didn't lose consciousness.

Mabrey said she started praying what she thought would be her final prayers. But she decided she wasn't going to die and decided instead to ask God to let her live.

She looked to see whether the garage door was locked and, she said, Hanney told her not to move. He lit a candle – a cucumber melon candle she had purchased at Target for their guest bathroom – and set it down on their washer and dryer.

"He then looks at me with a look that is hard to describe," she said, "absolute rage, empty hate, anger. …The look was like he was at a point of no return."

His expression changed, she said, and he tossed gasoline on her. She put up her hands and closed her eyes. But the fuel went all over her face, neck, arms, chest and abdomen and into her mouth. Next, he "tosses the candle at me like he's tossing me the remote," she said. "I instantly go up in flames."

She ran and managed to pull the garage door open enough to get out. As the door fell back down, she ran to the lawn. "Stop, drop and roll," she said. She was trying to save herself.

Her neighbor, Veronica Monsivais, was there and tried to help. Mabrey said she told Monsivais to call 911. On the instructions of a dispatcher, Monsivais pulled Mabrey into her house and put her in the shower to run water over her wounds until paramedics arrived.

Mabrey said she was awake until the medics drugged her unconscious as she was being airlifted. She said she doesn't remember anything else until she woke up in Tampa General Hospital sometime around Christmas. She was in the hospital for three months, undergoing painful treatments, physical therapy and a series of surgeries.

Still badly scarred from her ankles up, she expects to undergo many more operations.

.esilvestrini@tampatrib.com