Barbara Sheehan admits that she shot her retired New York City cop husband to death. On February 18, the mother of two confessed, she used two guns to fire 11 bullets into her husband’s back as he shaved. She described it as self-defense. The actual reasoning, however, remains a bit hazy.

According to Sheehan, her husband of 24 years, Raymond, was physically and emotionally abusive and she simply snapped. "It just got worse and worse as the years went by," Sheehan said to local 1010 WINS news.

Her lawyers, however, added a new twist to the tale yesterday when they called Raymond a "very sick man" who liked "she-males" and dressing in drag. And it was this so-called deviance that led him to abuse his wife.

"Here was a person engaged in self-loathing, remorse and an Irish sense of guilt," lawyer Michael Dowd told reporters, according to the New York Daily News. The latest "significant" evidence of Sheehan’s unusual sexual acitivities includes this "skimpy" lingerie set (picture above) he allegedly forced his wife to watch him wear," said Dowd.

According to the Daily News: "There’s no question that his violence preceded any of his out-of-the-mainstream sexual activities," said Dowd. "But these activities seem to have exacerbated to some degree what was going on. They seemed to increase and send him into a rage." Dowd also said that the address of a transvestite brothel near Albany was found in the GPS in his car.

From the outside, Raymond didn’t seem like a "sexual deviant" kind of guy. He served on the police force for 20 years and was a church volunteer. But after his death, an entirely different picture of Raymond came into focus — this one included stories from his two children, wife and wife’s laywer revealing years of violence. His wife told stories of past screaming matches, death threats and beatings so intense that, at least on one said account, Sheehan was hospitalized. His children speak of being scared of him. And apparently Sheehan was, too. Whether a jury will accept the "self-defense" and "deviant" arguments, however, remains to be seen. If found guilty of murder, Sheehan faces 25 years to life in prison.