OAKLAND, Calif. -- Concluding with three days of at times emotional testimony by Nina Reiser's mother, the prosecution in the murder case against her estranged husband has rested it case after portraying the victim as a dedicated mother who thought she had found her "prince" when she married Hans Reiser in 1998.

Under intense cross-examination Thursday, 59-year-old Irina Sharanova defended her daughter's action of going to a Russian marriage agency for help in finding a husband.

"Every girl dreams about princes," Sharanova responded to questioning by defense attorney William DeBois through a translator.

"Why would she use a marriage agency to find a prince?" DuBois countered.

"It's one of the ways of finding a prince," Sharanova answered.

In latter testimony, Sharanova told jurors that Reiser's demeanor changed during his years of marriage to Nina.

"The first two years he tried to be attentive and sufficiently warm," Sharanova, who often had tears in her eyes, told the jury. "And then he started showing signs of disdain. He started treating us like servants who, for some reason, owed him something."

During her days on the stand, Sharanova bolstered the prosecution's content that Nina Reiser was killed by Hans Reiser and had not fled a contentious divorce and was in hiding where her two children were living with their grandmother.

During his examination of Sharanova, Prosecutor Paul Hora asked her, "Based on spending your entire life knowing Nina, was she the type of daughter who would do that to you? Just disappear and not contact you or call you?"

Fighting back tears, Sharanova said, "No. That would have been impossible."

Hora asked, "Would she have been the type of mother who would have left her kids up for grabs and abandoned them?"

Sharanova said Nina wouldn't have done that.

Nina Reiser, who was 31 at the time, was last seen alive on Sept. 3, 2006, when she dropped off the couple's children at Hans Reiser's home at 6979 Exeter Drive in the Oakland hills.

Her body has never been found, despite extensive searches in the Oakland hills and elsewhere, but Hans Reiser was charged with murdering her because prosecutors believe that DNA and blood evidence proves that he killed her.

Hans and Nina Reiser married in 1999 but Nina filed for divorce and separated from him in 2004. They were in the midst of an acrimonious divorce and a battle over the custody of their children when she disappeared.

Hans Reiser has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

The closing of the prosecution's case Thursday ended three months of testimony from 57 prosecution witnesses. The trial will resume Tuesday with the start of the defense's argument.