Rajeeve "Ricky" Rai was described as a doting husband and father who found his wife, Sparkle, brutally murdered eight years ago.

"Ricky loved her," said the victim's aunt, Ctoria Arnold, when she testified Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court.

Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)

Fulton County prosecutor Sheila Ross shows an electrical cord from a vacuum cleaner to Dr. Michael Henniger of the Fulton County Medical Examiners office Monday in Fulton Superior Court. The cord was one of the items used in the death of Sparkle Rai, prosecutors says.

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Prosecutors contend that loving relationship led Rai's father to order the murder of 22-year-old Sparkle Rai. They say Chiman Rai, 68, paid $10,000 for a hit man because he objected to his son marrying a black woman.

"They didn't like her," Arnold said of her niece's in-laws. "She and Ricky both told me that."

Prosecutors want the Fulton County jury to give Chiman Rai the death penalty. Defense lawyers say the case for a contract killing is so thin — based on the testimony of co-defendants and people they describe as liars — that a conviction isn't even warranted, much less lethal injection. They contend Sparkle Rai was a robbery victim.

Rajeeve Rai found his wife stabbed to death April 26, 2000, when he returned from work to their Union City apartment. He found his 6-month old daughter, Analla, in a nearby room, crying but unharmed.

Cleveland Clark has been indicted for killing her and faces his own death penalty trial. Two co-defendants say they hired Clark at Chiman Rai's behest. The killing perplexed detectives until a break in the case resulted in Clark's arrest in 2004.

In the aftermath of the killing, Rajeeve Rai told police his parents were a "little racist" and didn't approve of his relationship with Sparkle.

On Tuesday, he testified that he was making assumptions about his parents' beliefs and while they may have prejudices they weren't hateful toward blacks.

Prosecutor Sheila Ross wasn't buying it.

"Mr. Rai," she said, "why would you ever assume your parents are racists?'

"I don't know," Rai said.

Sparkle's stepmother, Donna Lowry, testified Rajeev and Sparkle had "a very loving relationship" but that Rai told her that his parents were deceased. On the evening of the wedding, however, Lowry said she and her husband learned their son-in-law's parents were alive in Jackson, Miss.

Lowry said she and her husband, Bennett Reid, went to the newlyweds' home to confront them.

"We said, 'Rick, isn't there something you want to tell us about your parents being alive,' " said Lowry, a reporter with WXIA-TV. "' Someone talked to your mom earlier today.'

"He continued to deny it. We continued to press him and he finally admitted that his parents were still alive."

Rai never explained why he concocted the story, Lowry said.

Rai testified he and his wife moved to Atlanta to escape family pressure about the relationship and about him buckling down and getting an education.

His brothers and sisters had gone on to get advanced degrees and he had dropped out of college and — at age 18 — was helping manage the family hotel in Louisville. That's where he hired Sparkle to be a desk clerk.

Rai said he worked dead-end jobs in Atlanta. He described a ne'er-do-well life in which neither he nor his wife were finishing their college degrees — as both their families expected — and getting settled in life. When his wife was killed, Rai described his father's matter-of-fact reaction to being told she was murdered.

"He said, 'If you want, come home and we'll figure out what is next,' " Rai said.

Since his wife's death, Rai said, he has earned a business degree from Northwestern University and has married an Indian woman.

He hasn't seen his daughter, Analla, on whom he once doted, since shortly after the murder. He gave custody of her to Lowry and her husband, the child's grandfather. His parents have never seen the girl.

"Why haven't you seen your child in almost eight years?" Ross asked.

"It just seemed things got more and more distant," Rai said.