A defense attorney says a former Missouri city official charged with killing four family members was mentally ill at the time of the November 2009 shootings.

A capital murder trial for James Craig Kahler began Monday in Osage County District Court. He is accused of murdering his estranged wife, their two daughters and his wife’s grandmother at the grandmother’s home outside Burlingame, about 20 miles south of Topeka.

Prosecutors contend the murders were pre-meditated. Osage County Prosecutor Brandon Jones described Kahler as “cold-blooded and
calculating.”

But Thomas Haney, a Topeka attorney representing Kahler, said during his opening statement that Kahler was a shell of a man who snapped because his wife was having a lesbian affair.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.