Fifty-three-year-old former driving instructor Manuela Gonzalez is on trial for the murder of her husband, Daniel Cano. Gonzalez is accused of drugging her husband with sleeping pills and burning him to death in his car.

Cano was murdered in 2008. Police discovered Cano's charred remains in his burned-out car near the home that he and Gonzalez shared in the Isere region of the French Alps.

The prosecutors in the case claim that money was Gonzalez's motive in the murder of her husband. Gonzalez reportedly accumulated a great deal of debt due to her gambling addiction. Investigators discovered that Gonzalez re-mortgaged their home for $227,733 without telling her husband and may have killed him because his life insurance conveniently covered the cost of the mortgage.

Gonzalez has been nicknamed "The Black Widow" due to her past experiences with lovers that were drugged or died under suspicious circumstances.

UPI reports that in 1983, Gonzalez's then-husband went into a coma after an overdose of anti-depressants, and divorced her after he awoke. In 1984, while dating a jeweler, she spiked his tea with morphine in an attempt to solicit a check for $16,729. She was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.

In 1989, Gonzalez's partner died of asphyxiation from the fumes of his car in his garage; at the time, his death was ruled a suicide. In 1991, another partner was killed in an apartment fire. Although she was accused of starting the fire, the charges were later dropped.

The trial began on Monday and, although many clues point to Gonzalez as the murderer, she continues to claim her innocence.

"I continue to say that I am innocent of what I have been accused and that will be shown in court," Manuela Gonzalez said on the opening day of her trial for murder.

If found guilty, Gonzalez faces life in prison.