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A woman who says a series of harassing e-mails from her ex-husband left her constantly looking over her shoulder wept as she relayed the torment to a B.C. Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.Wesley VanDinter/Getty Images

A woman who says a series of harassing e-mails from her ex-husband left her constantly looking over her shoulder wept as she relayed the torment to a B.C. Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.

Patrick Fox is charged with criminal harassment over alleged online communications and publications regarding his ex-wife, Desiree Capuano.

Crown counsel Mark Myhre told the court e-mails sent by Mr. Fox to Ms. Capuano asserted the man would do anything to make her life miserable.

"'The singular role for the rest of my life is to destroy your life,'" Mr. Myhre read from one e-mail.

The e-mails sent to Ms. Capuano were signed by Patrick or Richard.

After providing her testimony from behind a screen in order to block the accused from her view, the screen was removed and Ms. Capuano was asked if she recognized the man who sent the e-mails.

She grimaced before turning her head to identify Mr. Fox, seated in the prisoners box wearing a red inmate suit.

Many e-mails Mr. Fox is alleged to have sent between 2014 and 2016 criticize Ms. Capuano's parenting and call her an "idiot" and "moron." The court heard those e-mails were also copied to their son, whose name is protected under a publication ban.

In one series of e-mails read out by the Crown, Mr. Fox wrote that he told their son he would shoot Ms. Capuano if shooting someone was not morally wrong and illegal.

He allegedly wrote that wanting to hurt someone wasn't illegal and he wouldn't actually hurt Ms. Capuano unless it was in self-defence.

"To me what that meant was … if the risk for going to jail was not there, he would shoot me, and he discussed it with our child," Ms. Capuano testified.

Mr. Fox also faces a charge of possession of firearms in a place where he was not authorized to do so.

Ms. Capuano told the jury that her son would visit Mr. Fox in Vancouver, then return to her home to Arizona acting like a different person, appearing withdrawn and scared.

"He would not associate with the family, he would not accept hugs like he normally would," Ms. Capuano said of her son.

The court heard Mr. Fox created a website revealing Ms. Capuano's personal information, including her home address, place of work and family photos, along with copies of their e-mail correspondence.

The website referred to Ms. Capuano as a white supremacist, child abuser and drug addict.

Ms. Capuano said she was fearful of having her personal information and the identities of her son with Mr. Fox and her other son accessible to anyone.

"We talked about moving, we talked about hiding identities, about what we could do to disappear so I could protect my family," she testified.

Mr. Myhre asked Ms. Capuano about her attempts to have the website taken down, including filing an order of protection against Mr. Fox in Arizona, contacting the website host and the RCMP.

"I couldn't get anyone to do anything about the website or the harassment and I was still at a point anybody any time Googled my name the website would come up, and it appeared that I wrote the website," Ms. Capuano said.

The jury heard that Ms. Capuano turned to the media for help and did a televised interview with the CBC in 2016.

After the interview, the website changed to reflect that it wasn't written by her, she said.

But the website remained active and Ms. Capuano said she believed she lost a job offer because of it.

She said she increasingly feared for her safety, believing Mr. Fox could illegally enter the United States.

"I know how much he despises me and all of the times he told me the world would be better without me in it," she said.

Ms. Capuano said she considered relinquishing custody of their son, but didn't believe it would help end the harassment.

"I could give him everything he wanted and it wouldn't matter, he wouldn't stop," she said.

The jury has yet to hear from the defence.

Joshua Mitchell has been found guilty of manslaughter in the hit-and-run death of gas station worker Maryam Rashidi. The crown prosecutor says the jury likely didn’t deliver a murder verdict due to the difficulty in determining intent.

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