This story has been dominating our newspapers over the last few days:

On 12 February, a well-respected architect picked up his well-respected accountant wife from work, and stopped off outside his well-respected flat in a well-respected area of Montevideo. He sat in the car outside while she popped up to change, as they were going out to dinner.

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Inside her house, his secretary and lover was waiting with a gun. She shot and injured the wife, who put on a fierce struggle lasting 45 minutes, during which the secretary tried to shoot, stab, strangle, suffocate the wife, and bang her on the head with a heavy object. The husband meanwhile just sat in the car. Neighbours heard the rumpus, called the emergency services, and the wife was taken off to the British Hospital along with her devoted husband. The lover escaped.

At the hospital, on 24 February, the night before the accountant was due to go home, while the husband was 'sleeping' lovingly by his wife (a phone conversation later came to light:'You pretend to be asleep, okay?'), someone - either the lover or her mother who is a nurse in some other hospital - sneaked in and injected an almost, but not quite, lethal dose of insulin into the accountant.

When she came out of the coma, she was suspicious of her husband's ministrations. After she was let out of hospital, she moved to the house they were buying together, leaving him in the flat, and blocked him off her bank account, cancelling his credit cards.

A week ago a 17-year-old hired killer tried to shoot the accountant through her car window, but her uncle who was with her threw himself on top of her in time: he was injured but she was unscathed. The couple's one-and-a-half-year-old child was also in the car.

The husband's affair soon came to light, and they left a string of incriminating evidence behind them: fingerprints, phone conversations, inconsistent testimonies ... the husband, lover, hired killer, and intermediary (who was paid $4000 for his botched efforts) have all been arrested, and the gorgeous blonde accountant smiles happily at all the press cameras, delighted that her nightmare is over.

For more on these stories, see

http://www.montevideo.com.uy/noticiappal_60498_1.html and
http://www.uruguaydailynews.com/news.php?viewStory=2029