AUBURN – The alleged murder victim testified Thursday at the trial of her ex-boyfriend.

On courtroom speakers, the recorded voice of 29-year-old Melissa Mendoza accused Daniel Roberts, 37, of beating her up. She lodged the claim during a phone call she secretly taped a week before he fatally shot her.

When Roberts denied the accusation, Mendoza said, “Obviously, my bruises don’t count for anything, right?”

She went on to say: “You’ve beaten me up … you’re gonna beat up the next woman in front of Savanna.”

An Androscoggin County Superior Court jury listened as Mendoza, in an even tone punctuated with sighs, tried to talk to Roberts about arranging a visit with their 2-year-old daughter, Savanna Marie Roberts.

The first sounds of Mendoza’s voice elicited sobs from her family members attending the trial, including her mother and sister.

Roberts’ angry response to her included profanities.

“I’m the one calling the (expletive) shots, not you,” he said, in a half-hour recording that was inaudible much of the time.

Mendoza, who recorded two of the couple’s phone calls, confronted Roberts about the tire slashing and windshield smashing of her rental cars while in Maine on trips from California.

She suggested Roberts’ involvement in those acts of vandalism was an effort to sabotage her visits with Savanna.

In a separate phone call with a friend, also taped by Mendoza, she talks about her fear of Roberts.

“There’s nothing that’s going to keep me safe,” she said. Roberts’ friends were stalking her, she said.

“They know exactly where I am,” she said. “Everywhere I go, they’re there.”

Mendoza’s friend and Roberts’ step-sister, Dawn Destrini testified that she gave Mendoza her microcassette recorder to tape the conversations with Roberts.

Questioned later by Roberts’ attorney, Leonard Sharon, Destrini conceded that the couple usually screamed at each other during phone calls.

Destrini’s husband, John Jr., said on the stand that he drove Mendoza and Savanna to meet Roberts at a Poland school where Roberts would take custody of the toddler.

When they arrived, Mendoza jumped out of the car, yelling and swearing at Roberts. She was “really angry at him,” Destrini said, because she thought he robbed her of her court-ordered overnight visit with her daughter. Although she stood only a foot from him while she screamed, Roberts appeared to be the calm one, Destrini said.

Roberts suggested to Destrini during a phone call that day that Mendoza might have slashed the tires of the Destrini’s cars in an effort to frame Roberts.

Destrini said he didn’t take the suggestion seriously, but had his wife and Mendoza try to puncture one of the tires. Neither one could.

In the afternoon, Deputy Attorney General William Stokes called witnesses to describe the scene of the shooting at the garage of Roberts’ Sabattus home. Mendoza’s family left the courtroom before the crime scene testimony.

Police who investigated the case took the stand, one by one, explaining to the jury what was depicted in photos of Mendoza’s dead body on the garage floor near the door.

She was shown slumped on the floor, a pool of blood by her head. Her hair covered a partially empty Pepsi bottle. Her cell phone lay on her hair. The straps of a purse were near her fingers.

Two guns were shown on the floor. One, a chrome-plated handgun with black grips, was near Mendoza’s body. A dark revolver was shown near the back of a pickup truck parked in the garage.

That gun had an expended shell in the chamber. The other gun was loaded but unfired, said retired State Police Detective Jeffrey Smith. A bullet hole was found in one of the walls.

Sabattus police officer Katherine Irazzary was first on the scene. She said the chrome gun was near the door to the garage when she arrived. It was later kicked by one of two paramedics who later responded to the scene in an ambulance. Irazzary checked for a pulse in Mendoza’s right wrist, then her neck. There was none.

During cross examination, Sharon questioned Irazzary’s ability to recall the scene accurately, including the placement of the gun. He asked whether she had been investigated by the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office for allegedly writing a bad check around the time of the shooting. She apparently told a detective at that agency she suffered from attention deficit disorder and had difficulty focusing, Sharon said.

The prosecutors are expected to continue building their case against Roberts today, the fifth day of the trial.