[chris]

An Aberdeen man is standing trial a second time on charges that he provided the heroin that killed his wife, a death he first reported himself in a 911 call in which he told a dispatcher she was turning blue.

Robert Crane faces an 11-count indictment, including two counts of involuntary manslaughter, in the March 17, 2011, death of 41-year-old Christine Crane at the couple's home on Ohio 41 in Brown County, according to court records and the Ledger Independent. A new jury was seated in late January for the retrial after his first trial ended in a mistrial.

The case began just after 7 a.m. that morning, when Crane called 911 from the home. "My wife, my wife, my wife, she's, uh, turning blue," he told the Brown County dispatcher, according to the recording. Asked whether she was breathing, he answered, "No."

The dispatcher stayed on the line for about 13 minutes, directing Crane to move his wife to the floor and guiding him through CPR until the Aberdeen Life Squad arrived. Crane said his wife had used heroin about an hour earlier and that the two had fallen asleep before he woke to find her unresponsive, according to the call.

Christine Crane was taken to Meadowview Regional Medical Center in Maysville, Kentucky, where she was pronounced dead. A forensic examination attributed her death to heroin toxicity, and the Brown County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation.

A grand jury indicted Crane that May on eight felonies and three misdemeanors, among them corrupting another with drugs, permitting drug abuse, heroin possession, complicity to trafficking in heroin and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. Prosecutors alleged that he supplied the drug that caused his wife's death. Crane had been held at the county jail on a $500,000 bond since June 2011.

His first trial ended in a mistrial six days into testimony over remarks a witness made about domestic violence allegations, according to the Ledger Independent. At the retrial, prosecution witnesses described drug use in the home and a decline in Christine Crane's health in the months before her death.