BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. -- Prosecutors in Brevard County told jurors Wednesday morning that a man murdered his girlfriend because she was planning to go back to work as a stripper.

Robert Christopher Toth faces life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Mary Ayers. Prosecutors spent about half an hour Wednesday morning laying out what they described as a pattern of abuse on Toth's girlfriend and the mother of his child and then the methodical strangulation using plastic bags and twine to kill her.

Prosecutors say Toth murdered his girlfriend in August 2004 after she told him she planned to go back to work at Lido's Cabaret, a strip club. Prosecutors believe he first hit her with his elbow and then strangled her.

The woman was found inside her home with two plastic grocery bags wrapped around her head, and bound in yellow twine, 70 feet of it. Prosecutors said Toth took his time to make sure he cut off all her oxygen in the way he tied the string around her neck.

"And he was so methodical about the wrapping of this twine and string around her neck that after so often he would stop and he'd make a loop and he'd cinch and then he would start back the other way," prosecutor Rob Parker said Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Toth blamed the murder on a black man that he saw working in a yard next door and ran off into the woods. Instead of calling for help, prosecutors said, he searched for the mysterious man for four hours in the woods and left their 2-month-old son on a couch in the house.

By comparison, Toth's defense attorney said very little in his opening statements, saying there was no sign of abuse before the murder and that Toth had no motive or reason to kill his girlfriend. In fact, the judge asked the defendant after the opening statements whether he was "okay" with the strategy his defense team was taking.