Los Angeles -- Marjorie Knoller insisted yesterday that she never blamed Diane Whipple for her own death, then underwent grueling cross-examination in which prosecutors suggested she valued her own life more than the dog-mauling victim's.

The lawyer-turned-murder defendant was at first emotional when her attorney questioned her about how she had put her life on the line to save Whipple, then answered in a detached tone under cross-examination.

Prosecutor James Hammer wondered why the 46-year-old Knoller had not put her arm or hand into her dog's mouth to stop the animal's attack Jan. 26, 2001.

"You cared more about yourself and your safety than Diane Whipple, is that fair to say?" Hammer repeatedly asked, over defense objection.

"I was always concerned about Ms. Whipple's safety," Knoller calmly and firmly replied. Hammer asked the question again, but got the same answer.

Knoller eventually replied, "I was more concerned about Ms. Whipple's safety than mine." But she acknowledged that she had not put her hand in the mouth of her 120-pound Presa Canario, Bane, because she feared the dog would shred it.

"You never put your hand in his mouth so he couldn't bite Diane Whipple, isn't that true?"

"That's true," she said.

Hammer zeroed in on "brand new things" in Knoller's account, elements he said she had never brought up in six hours of grand jury testimony last year. He suggested she had "made up" a self-serving version for her trial on second- degree murder and manslaughter charges.

Knoller answered that her memory had improved since the traumatic days after Whipple's death. "It fades in and out," she said. ''There's things I recall, things I don't recall."

The prosecutor wanted to know why in earlier accounts Knoller had not mentioned kicking on a neighbor's door for help, hearing a neighbor say she had alerted authorities or hitting Bane on the head to stop the animal.

Hammer also suggested that Knoller had changed her story about what she was doing as Whipple lay dying on the floor outside her Pacific Heights apartment. Knoller told the grand jury that she had poked around for her keys, walking around her bleeding neighbor. At her trial, however, she testified that she had looked for the keys after police arrived.

Prosecutors have sought to portray Knoller as indifferent to her dog's assault on Whipple. Earlier in the trial, they showed the jury a television interview she gave 10 days after the incident in which she denied responsibility and suggested that all Whipple had to do to survive was shut her door.

Knoller's defense attorney, Nedra Ruiz, sought to minimize the damage as she questioned her client yesterday.

"Do you blame Diane Whipple for the dog attack?" Ruiz asked.

"No, not at all, never have," Knoller said.

"Have you ever claimed you were not responsible for the attack suffered by Diane Whipple?"

"I said in an interview that I wasn't responsible -- but it wasn't in regard to what Bane had done," Knoller said. "It was in regards to knowing whether he would do that or not."

Then, Knoller became tearful.

"And I had no idea that he would ever do anything like that," she said. "How could you anticipate something like that? A totally bizarre event? How can you anticipate that a dog that you know, that is gentle and loving and affectionate, can do something so horrible and brutal and disgusting and gruesome?"

Hammer came out swinging on cross-examination, suggesting that Knoller was not really crying for Whipple but for herself.

"I was crying for her family and friends and the pain they felt," Knoller said.

Hammer then delved into the "triad" relationship between Knoller, her husband and co-defendant, Robert Noel, and Pelican Bay state prison inmate Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood gang and the couple's adopted son.

Knoller denied knowing that Schneider and other Pelican Bay inmates were involved in a scheme to raise vicious Presa Canarios. She and Noel obtained Bane and a second Presa Canario, Hera, simply because they were representing a woman in a legal battle to gain custody of the dogs, Knoller testified.

But Hammer pointed to a letter that Knoller wrote in which she expressed approval for the name the inmates had given to the operation -- "Dog O' War."

"I thought it was a good name," she said, but denied knowing details of the dog-breeding operation or taking part in it.

She said Janet Coumbs, the Trinity County woman who at one point was raising the dogs for Schneider, had lied when she testified she had told Knoller and Noel that Hera ''should be shot" after having attacked her sheep and other livestock.

She also suggested that her own husband had gotten things wrong, including an incident he wrote about in a letter months before the attack in which he said the dogs had dragged Knoller down the hall.

"I really can't recall that. . . . I don't believe it happened," Knoller said. "He might have been expressing or exaggerating an incident."

The prosecution's cross-examination will continue today.

E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.