Investigators showed a Newark courtroom a rusty 18-inch long machete believed to have been used in the murder of three college students in a Newark playground.

An Essex County, N.J., prosecutor also held up crime scene photos showing the murder victims lying in pools of blood that caused anguished family members in the court to shut their eyes and hold back tears.

The display of the weapon provided a dramatic note to the bravery that was on display in the courtroom last week, when the lone survivor of one of New Jersey's most notorious slayings took the stand and told the court that she was attacked with a machete, sexually abused and then shot before she was left for dead.

Natasha Aeriel said she and three friends - all Newark natives and students at Delaware State University - were hanging out at the courtyard of Newark's Mount Vernon School on an August night in 2007, when murderous madness broke out.

She said her brother, Terrance, typed out an urgent cell-phone text while a group of men who were sitting nearby appeared to pose a threat.

Minutes later, Natasha Aeriel recalled, she was being attacked with a long knife.

"Somebody tried to chop my neck off with a machete," she told the silent court in chilling testimony. "He pulled my hair and tried to chop my neck off with a machete."

Others in the group of attackers shot and killed her brother Terrance, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey execution-style.

Rodolfo Godinez, a Nicaraguan immigrant and the first of six defendants to stand trial, has pleaded not guilty to murder, weapons and robbery charges. He claims to speak little English, even though he has lived in Northern New Jersey since the age of 5. His attorney has said he is "borderline retarded."

Each defendant will be tried separately.

Prosecutors have said each of the defendants has ties to the Central American-based street gang known as MS-13. They added that the killings could have been part of an initiation ritual.

Godinez admits that he was at the schoolyard the evening of the attack and was a witness, but took no part in the violence.

Aeriel said the evening started without incident, and she and her friends had even exchanged a few nonthreatening words with two of the men who would later attack them. Her brother, who was 100 feet away, then texted her to say they should leave, but it was too late as four other men joined the two others.

The attack was on moments later, Aeriel said.

Some may question why Aeriel and her friends went to the schoolyard to hang out, but no evidence has been presented that the students, who didn't have police records, were up to anything beyond hanging out and sharing one another's company.

They had no reasonable expectation that they would be jumped on and savagely attacked.

To me, anyone, especially a gang member, who was with the attackers that night is guilty as sin. For me, Godinez's claim that he was there but didn't harm anyone rings hollow. And for me, the fortitude of Natasha Aeriel is to be admired.