The wife of Opposition leader Kim Swan insisted last night she never knew her first husband was in the Chinese Mafia during their marriage.

Charity founder Cindy Swan — whose 40-year-old son with her former husband is on trial in the US for the murder of a North Carolina state trooper — wed Edwardo Wong Sr. when she was 15 and had three children with him before they divorced in 1982.

She said in a statement issued to The Royal Gazette: "During our marriage, to the best of my knowledge, Edwardo Sr. was not involved with the Chinese mafia and never travelled to Hong Kong or anywhere in China."

US newspapers have reported during the ongoing capital murder trial of Edwardo Wong Jr. that his father was high up in the Chinese Triad mafia and was jailed for 30 years on a federal drug trafficking conviction.

Wong Sr. was stabbed to death in prison in Atlanta in 1994, in what one expert has claimed was a Triad-ordered execution.

Wong Jr. was brought up by his father after Mrs. Swan left the marriage, taking their other two children with her.

He is now facing the death penalty if convicted by a jury in Catawba County of the premeditated murder of 24-year-old Trooper Shawn Blanton on June 17, 2008.

The Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper yesterday reported more details of the videotaped deposition of Mrs. Swan, which was shown to the jury as defence testimony on Monday.

She told a prosecutor during the deposition, filmed in Atlanta last year, that she did not know Wong Sr. was a Triad member but suspected something was wrong when large amounts of cash starting showing up at their Florida home.

The trial heard she married Wong Sr. in 1969 when she was pregnant. Mrs. Swan's sister Sadhvi Velasquez testified that her mother didn't give her a choice, calling it a "shotgun wedding".

The couple moved to New York and had another son, Michael, and daughter Mailinn. They separated in 1980 and Mrs. Swan took the two younger children. Michael is now a teacher in Japan and Mailinn is a family practitioner in the States.

The Citizen-Times quoted Mrs Swan as saying in her deposition that Wong Jr., who was ten at the time, wanted to stay with his father.

"In my honest opinion, as his mother, if I had to do it again I would have tried to insist on different arrangements," she said. "My parental skills are not what Eddie Jr. needed. I have regrets of how I conducted myself as a mother."

She said she regretted not getting her son psychiatric help after he began behaving badly following a five-storey fall from a New York apartment building, aged four.

Wong Jr.'s legal team claim the fall left him with a "long track record of poor thinking" but prosecutors have suggested the accident never happened and that Wong Sr. broke his son's leg that day.

Mrs. Swan told prosecutors she had visited her son in jail since his arrest but would not attend the trial for personal reasons, one of which was cost.

In her statement last night, Mrs. Swan, chairman of the Project Action charity and a professional organiser, said: "The reports in the media of my son's actions are correct. I was married to Edwardo Wong Sr. We were legally divorced in 1982."

She said Wong Jr. — known as Eddie — lived with his father and stepmother Lynn Wong (now Lynn Stone) from the age of 11.

"As this matter is before the courts, please respect that there will be no further statements," she added.

She told this newspaper on Monday that the case had left her "hurt and disappointed" and deeply saddened for Trooper Blanton's family.

Convicted felon and drug dealer Wong Jr. — who has met UBP leader Mr. Swan only once — opted yesterday not to take the stand in his own defence, according to the Citizen-Times.

The newspaper reported that the defence rested its case in the morning and that prosecutors would now call their rebuttal witnesses.