In opening statements, Coleen St. Clair of the Snohomish County prosecutor's office said evidence would show that King was already searching for a new mail-order bride when he came up with a complex scheme to explain the disappearance of his 20-year-old wife. One scheme included pinning her killing on a tenant in his Mountlake Terrace home, St. Clair said.

King, 40, on trial on a first-degree murder charge in Snohomish County Superior Court Judge George Bowden's courtroom, has denied any involvement in his wife's death.

She vanished after the couple visited her parents in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, part of the old Soviet Union, in September 2000. King initially told authorities he thought she had stayed in that country, but they were on the same return flight and U.S. Customs Service records showed both arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Sept. 22, 2000.

Her body was found on the Tulalip Indian Reservation near Marysville about three months later by authorities acting on a tip.

The state's case has been complicated by the key prosecution witness, a former boarder at the King home who has offered at least three versions of the crime.

Daniel Kristopher Larson, 21, a convicted sex offender, initially told authorities King had killed his wife and showed Larson where he buried her.

Then Larson said he strangled Anastasia King with a necktie while she was pinned beneath her 270-pound husband. Larson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Late last year, prosecutors disclosed that Larson had written a letter to another inmate in April claiming sole responsibility for the killing.

In a related development, prosecutors earlier this month charged King with offering $5,000 in cash plus $1,300 in bail money to get a fellow inmate to silence a witness for the trial.

Bowden dealt the prosecution a blow Tuesday when he ruled out the use of e-mail and other communications that were seized by Mountlake Terrace police detectives who searched King's home and confiscated three storage boxes full of documents and other items.

Prosecutors had planned to show the jury some of the communications between King and prospective mail-order brides shortly before and after his wife vanished.

Bowden ruled that a search warrant obtained by police specified computer records, and the e-mail the prosecutors wanted to introduce was found only in paper printouts and not in electronic form in the computer.

The Kings were married in 1998 after meeting through an overseas matchmaking service. Prosecutors contend King was a jealous and controlling husband who flew into a rage when his pretty blonde wife decided to leave him in the summer of 2000.

King filed for divorce that August, after Anastasia King began developing a life of her own - attending classes at the University of Washington, learning to drive and making friends while working as a waitress in Seattle.

King's first marriage, to a younger woman he met by placing a newspaper advertisement inviting a female Russian student to study in the United States, ended after she left him and said he was abusive.