A New Jersey nurse accused of killing and dismembering her husband is scheduled to go to trial today.

Melanie McGuire was charged with first-degree murder in April 2004 after three suitcases full of her husband's body parts washed up along Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

McGuire pleaded not guilty to killing her husband, 39-year-old state computer analyst William McGuire.

Prosecutors contend McGuire killed her husband in part so she could continue an affair with her boss at a fertility clinic.

The state will try to prove that McGuire drugged her husband with a sedative, shot him in the head and chest and dismembered his body in the bathroom of the apartment they shared with their two preschool sons.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)