A Ray Township man who was shot by his former lover’s husband and shot the woman during a July 2022 altercation received over $40,000 from the couple’s company in the months prior to the incident.

Daniele “Danny” Giannone testified Friday at the murder trial of Matthew Mollicone of Washington Township that his wife, Kimberly, with whom he had an affair, made over a dozen payments ranging from over $1,000 to nearly $6,000 to Giannone’s debit and credit accounts using funds from the Mollicones’ company, State Barricades Inc., over the first few months of 2022.

Giannone insisted the payments were initiated by Kimberly Mollicone, denying accusations from the defense attorney he was somehow stealing from the company.

“She did it on her own … without me knowing,” Giannone said under questioning by defense attorney Stephen Rabaut. “I didn’t do a thing. I don’t know why she was doing it, but I wasn’t going to stop her.”

He told Rabaut he didn’t thank her because he was engaged.

“I would’ve loved to but I didn’t want to make any problems with my future wife,” he said.

He had given his debit-card account number to Kimberly, he said. He did not explain how she was able to make payments to his credit card but indicated he operated a painting business.

He testified at first he didn’t know the payments were coming from State Barricades.

Giannone said Kimberly made the payments at least three years after they had ended their intimacy, although they had remained “cordial.” Their affair started between 2012 and 2014 after the couple met at the Kit Kat Club in Macomb Township, defense attorney Peter Torrice said.

During his testimony, Giannone altered multiple statements.

He said he had not talked to Kimberly for over a year prior to the incident despite evidence of at least one in-person contact noted by defense attorneys and evidence of two phone calls by Kimberly to a number used by Giannone. In addition, a call from that number, his parents’ landline phone, which he gave to police as his contact number, was made to Kimberly May 9, 2022, attorneys said.

Giannone then admitted he had contact with her when she had unexpectedly come to his home within a year of the incident but claimed the phone calls didn’t involve him.

According to evidence presented by the defense, Giannone also expressed concern about being in trouble for fraud in a text message around the time of the payments.

The disclosure of the payments added a wrinkle to the bizarre murder case that is subject of a jury trial in front of Judge Matthew Sabaugh in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.

Mollicone is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges for the death of Kimberly, 49, who was shot in the neck at the end of a shoot-out that erupted after an angry Mollicone, accompanied by Kimberly, arrived at Giannone’s home to confront him.

Mollicone — who faces life without parole if convicted of the top charge — is charged under the theory he endangered his wife by bringing her to a place of a high risk of serious injury or death, during which he also committed a home invasion.

Assistant Macomb Prosecutor Steve Fox has presented evidence of a volatile marriage in recent years, including allegations of physical abuse of Kimberly by Mollicone, based on statements the late woman made to her mother and two female friends as well as her autopsy that showed fresh abrasions on her body, including cuts to her scalp. Former county Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz testified the injuries could have come from her being hit on the top of the head with a glass picture frame, an incident she related to friend Lori Grant the day of the incident.

Kimberly Mollicone told multiple people Mollicone would “interrogate” her for hours about the affair with Giannone, wanting details about their sexual acts. One text message sent by Kimberly says he questioned her from midnight to 9 a.m. one day.

Meanwhile, Mollicone’s attorneys, Rabaut and Peter Torrice, have attempted to shift blame to Giannone for the tragic outcome, emphasizing he fired the fatal bullet.

They also accused him of restarting the gun battle as the Mollicones were leaving in their Jeep Cherokee after the initial fray — in which Mollicone shot Giannone in the foot and leg — ended.

During the second exchange, Mollicone opened the passenger-side front window and fired a shot as Kimberly was driving in reverse, and Giannone responded by firing seven or eight shots toward the Mollicones, one of them piercing the windshield and striking Kimberly.

Giannone denied Rabaut’s assertion that he pointed his gun at Mollicone after retrieving it from his home, and Mollicone responded in defense.

Videos of the chaotic scene from multiple home-security cameras, which were played in the courtroom, captured images of some of the incident and most of the audio, including loud gunshots, Mollicone and Giannone running, and screams from Kimberly Mollicone and others at the scene.

The shoot-out began at about 9:30 p.m. July 12 when Mollicones arrived in the white Jeep at the North Avenue property, which has a long driveway leading up to the attached three car garage and serves as a back entrance. Giannone said he was in the garage “smoking my last cigarette of the day” following a barbecue attended by his pregnant fiance, his sister’s two daughters ages 6 and 9 who resided two doors away, and his parents, who lived next door and had arrived after the others had eaten.

Giannone was carrying a 5-shot, .38 Special revolver in his pocket that he said he usually did due to wild animals frequenting his large parcel, and for protection. That day, he also kept a .40-caliber Glock 27 pistol on the front seat of his BMW parked in the garage and other guns inside, he said.

Upon arrival, Mollicone exited the Jeep and “charged” and “rushed” at him, yelling to “stay away” from his wife and displaying a gun in his waistband, according to Giannone.

“I told him I didn’t know what he was there for,” Giannone testified. “I said, ‘Get out or I’ll blow your f—ing head off.”

Giannone said he was about 3 feet from the garage, and Mollicone got within 1 to 3 feet of him. Giannone “felt his breath in my face” when he fired a “warning shot” into the air and to the right of Mollicone, he said.

He said Mollicone initially backed away with his arms up and then pulled out his gun and fired. In response, Giannone said he fired the remaining four bullets in his gun; he dropped it and his phone and ran around the side of the garage.

Mollicone can be seen in video moving on to grass to get an angle to fire more shots at Giannone, doing so while holding the gun with both hands and getting into a three-point stance.

As Mollicone fires, video shows, Giannone runs to the front door to enter but was stopped by chicken wire placed in front of the porch to keep roaming chickens out of the house. He falls to the ground and screams in pain from an apparent gunshot as he leaves the porch area, video indicates, gets up and runs to the other side of the house, where he enters a sliding glass door.

Giannone said he could also hear his sister, who ran from her house, screaming about her two children.

He said he went through the house and exited into the garage to retrieve the Glock from his car. Meanwhile, Mollicone circled back to the driveway in front of the garage, grasping the gun with both hands.

Giannone said he saw Mollicone “fiddling” with his gun, and a family member said he was reloading.

Kimberly at that time was also in the driveway and, according the audio, yells, “Stop it. Stop it Matt. What did you do?”

Mollicone says, “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Who else has a gun here?”

According to the video, Kimberly steers the Jeep in reverse to traverse the long driveway, when Mollicone fires a shot, and Giannone returns fire that included the shot that killed Kimberly.

After the incident, Giannone stayed in the house on the advice of a dispatcher, received medical treatment and talked to sheriff’s investigators, he said.

Defense attorneys presented evidence that indicated Giannone may have been tipped off about Mollicone coming to the house that day so was prepared for a confrontation.

Call logs show Kimberly Mollicone called a friend of Giannone’s early on the day of the incident, attorneys indicated. Later in the day, about 3 p.m., Giannone had two calls totaling 17 minutes with that same friend. That friend of Giannone’s is the same person whom Kimberly suggested her friend, Ann Marie Dilegge, to contact the day of the incident to warn Giannone.

Giannone initially told police he didn’t remember the two calls with his friend but then recalled them but not their content.

“I think it was just friendly conversion,” he testified.

The defense also presented a video-audio of Giannone walking outside the home talking on a phone and saying, “I’m going to kill that motherf—,” implying he was referring to Mollicone. But Fox presented a longer version of the video that may have indicated Giannone was referring to a rooster pecking at him.

Defense attorneys also have asserted during cross examination that Mollicone would’ve have killed Giannone if he really wanted to because he was “an incredible shot,” as testified to by Dilegge, whose family was friends with the Mollicones and their children. She said she went to a gun range with Mollicone once and said he “hit the bullseye” virtually every shot. But Fox noted shooting targets from a stationary position in a calm and quiet setting differs drastically from the haywire events that day.

Regarding Giannone’s wounds, the most severe shot was in his leg just above his knee. “It hurts. It will never be the same,” he said, noting he also walks with a limp.

The foot shot appeared to hit his two outside toes, according to a photo. The trial was attended by about 25 people, filling about half of the courtroom, after a full courtroom watched opening statements Wednesday.

It is scheduled to continue Tuesday. Mollicone remains held in the county jail in lieu of a $5 million bond.