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Michelle Berman wants to be clear: she never intended for it to happen this way.

But the estranged wife of Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman says she is frightened of him and believes she had no choice.

So she's told investigators, and the Tribune, that Berman has been abusing her, physically and mentally, for years.

She finally called friend and Gilbert police counselor Lacy Cox last week, she said, after Steve Berman threatened to kill her father. She says she asked Cox to keep the matter confidential.

Still, Gilbert police turned the case over to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. "The next thing I know they're knocking on my door," she said. Detectives conducted a tape-recorded interview with Michelle Berman on July 9.

"Please make it clear that I wish him no harm," she said in a telephone interview Monday.

"I just wanted a quick, quiet separation and divorce. But because of the threats, I had to report it to a counselor."

Steve Berman has refused numerous requests since last week to respond to the allegations. At the time, he said, "I haven't been accused of anything. You guys haven't seen a police report. There's nothing to talk about."

On Tuesday, Tribune reporters waited outside his office at Gilbert Town Hall for more than three hours to talk to the mayor; his staff said he was busy in meetings but passed on questions to him.

About 3 p.m., Berman left through a back exit and sprinted to his truck, past a reporter waiting outside. The reporter called to him but he kept running and then jumped in his truck, driving off even though the truck's sun shield was still in the front window. Berman smiled and waved at the reporter as he drove off.

Then, late Tuesday, Chris Baker, who identified himself as Berman's political consultant, released a statement from Berman, saying that "at no point have I ever been physically abusive towards her, nor have I ever threatened as she alleges to kill her or her father."

He said the problems between them stem from her "serious and documentable drug-abuse problem."

"As with any marriage where someone has a substance-abuse problem, situations can sometimes become tough to deal with," the statement said. "My wife and I have had many heated discussions stemming from her drug abuse that I have later regretted."

Michelle Berman told the Tribune two days ago she had struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers after she broke her foot and her knee but has been clean for three years.

His wife predicted Berman would use her previous addiction to deflect the domestic-violence allegations. Two of her close friends supported her contention that she has not used drugs for years.

Berman has not been arrested or charged in the county case. The Sheriff's Office won't release any information on the investigation until it is completed, sheriff's spokesman Capt. Paul Chagolla said.

Among other things, Michelle Berman says she told county investigators about an incident May 17 when Berman punched her in the back.

"We were walking into the bedroom and this guy punched me with all his might, right in the back," she said. "He begged me for forgiveness."

It was a typical pattern, she said, that began soon after they met at Berman's Cellular Solutions phone store in 2001. Verbal or physical abuse, Michelle Berman said, was always followed by apologies and promises.

There's also a pattern that emerges from more than two decades of divorce records from Maricopa County Superior Court involving Berman, who turned 60 on Tuesday and is in the final year of his second four-year term as Gilbert mayor.

Michelle Berman, 46, is the mayor's fourth wife.

His third wife, Dawn Berman Schackner, filed for divorce in 1996 after about 10 years of marriage, which produced a daughter, Elizabeth.

Schackner and Berman fought bitterly over money, and Berman sought alimony but didn't get it.

Though their divorce became final in May 1997, they were still arguing in court about money and custody matters more than five years later.

Schackner filed two orders of protection against Berman alleging threats of violence, though the second, in April 2001, was denied and the first, in March 1999, was dismissed weeks later.

Though acrimonious, the court records don't indicate physical violence during his marriage to Schackner.

But that's not the case with wife No. 2.

Christine Berman married Berman when she was five months pregnant with the couple's son, Steve Jr. She also had a daughter, whom Berman adopted when she was about 6 years old.

Christine Berman moved out and filed for divorce less than three years after their 1981 marriage.

In court documents, she sought custody of the children, saying she feared for her safety and that of her children because of Berman's "violent temper and repeated acts of mental and physical abuse and harassment."

In response to Berman's resistance to paying alimony, Commissioner Joel Glynn found in 1985 that Christine Berman had been unable to work, in part, because of "injuries sustained by an assault from respondent/husband."

Berman also balked at paying child support, but offered to let his wife and children share the survival meals he had stockpiled at his home, according to court records.