Aide: Edwards' Wife Believed Lies About Paternity

Until he finally came clean, John Edwards' dying wife desperately continued to believe his claims that he hadn't fathered a child with mistress Rielle Hunter, a former aide said at his trial yesterday. Jennifer Palmieri testified that she told her close friend Elizabeth Edwards that she believed John was lying, but that Elizabeth "did not want to believe" that was the case, the Washington Post reports. Sobbing openly in court, Palmieri—who cut her ties to Edwards after he lied throughout a 2008 interview—described Elizabeth's tormented last days before she died of breast cancer in 2010.

She "expressed concerns because she didn't want to be alone," Palmieri said. "When she and John separated she was concerned there would not be a man around to love her." The testimony is key to the prosecution's efforts to establish that Edwards was going to great lengths to hush up the affair, and that he was aware that campaign cash was being spent to do so. Prosecutors plan to wrap up their case tomorrow, but to the surprise of many, Hunter is not listed among their final witnesses. Click here for more on the trial. (More Rielle Hunter stories.)