ORLANDO, Fla. Noor Salman looked up as the prosecutor directed the jurys attention to a copy of her 2011 marriage certificate. There, on the screen, was her looping signature, right next to Omar Mateens. Proof she wed a killer.

The 31-year-old widow shivered and hiked a purple blanket up to her neck, glancing over at her team of defense attorneys for reassurance. They often soothed her in court with physical touch, squeezing her shoulder or patting her arm. Her fear was palpable.

Later, Salman watched herself on the same screen, testing perfumes at Victorias Secret. In the security camera footage shown to the jury, she sniffed a paper strip, then passed it to her husband for his thoughts. He must have agreed; they left with a shiny pink bag.

Three days after that shopping trip, Mateen slaughtered 49 people inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando. In calls with police from the scene, he declared allegiance to ISIS and said he acted to avenge U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Mateen was killed during the attack.

While her husband was committing mass murder, Salman was in her pajamas, asleep in their home in Fort Pierce, Florida. Seven months later, she was charged with aiding and abetting her husband and obstructing justice for allegedly lying to the FBI . Prosecutors claimed that Salman helped her husband scout potential locations for the attack, created a cover story for him and participated in unusual spending.

The seemingly ordinary excursion to a mall store was now center stage in a federal terrorism trial . In the days leading up to the shooting, Mateen spent thousands of dollars on Salman, buying her clothes and jewelry, including a diamond ring. Prosecutors suggested she got the gifts in exchange for agreeing to help him carry out his heinous plan.

There was zero evidence that Salman was radicalized herself, they admitted. Instead, they argued that she was content to trade her husband the sole provider for her and her 3-year-old son for baubles and designer wear.

Salman, who did not testify in the trial herself, pleaded not guilty, and maintained through her lawyers that she had no knowledge of Mateens plans. When he began showering her with presents in the weeks before the massacre, Salman was optimistic about their future, her lawyers said, and believed it was a sign her husband a brutish, abusive man who only permitted her a $20 allowance each week was changing.

For the 49 families of the victims, the trial was an opportunity for closure. And yet, they didnt get to see the man that took their loved ones lives. Instead, they got his wife.

In courtroom sketches, Salman resembled a Disney princess oversized eyes, a button nose and lustrous, thick hair. But in person, sitting in the courtroom here in downtown Orlando just two miles from the club where the massacre took place, she was pale with deep, dark circles under her eyes. Her clothes were ill-fitting, she wore no visible makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail.

By the time of the trial, Salman had spent 14 months in jail, mostly in solitude. Each day, she was allowed a single phone call to her son, but that was it. She missed holding him and hugging him, her family said.

During opening statements, Salmans lawyer said she had been eagerly awaiting her day in court. After her arrest, rumors and speculations about her abounded and settled in like a rot. She drove him to the club that night. She was a member of ISIS. She fled the country after the attack. All were untrue.

Finally, in court, she got to set the record straight.