Witness says dentist still loved husband
Posted on 01/28/2003 2:40:40 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Witness says dentist still loved husband
Private eye testifies woman blamed herself for spouse's affair
01/28/2003
HOUSTON - A private investigator hired by Clara Harris the day before she fatally ran over her orthodontist husband with her Mercedes-Benz testified Monday that she still appeared to be in love with the man despite his suspected philandering.
"You could tell she really loved her husband," private investigator Claudine Phillips said as the second week of Dr. Harris' murder trial began.
Dr. Harris, a dentist, is accused of intentionally running down David Harris in the parking lot of the Houston-area hotel where the couple married a decade earlier on Valentine's Day.
On July 24, Dr. Harris found her husband, 44, at the hotel with a former female employee, who she believed had set out to "trap" him.
Prosecutors allege that after her husband spurned her, Dr. Harris intentionally ran him over numerous times.
Defense attorneys say that Dr. Harris "lost it" and that it was an accident when she struck her husband with her silver Mercedes. They say Dr. Harris only wanted to keep her marriage and family together.
Ms. Phillips told the jury that Dr. Harris hired Blue Moon Investigations on July 23 to follow her husband and his confessed mistress, Gail Bridges.
Dr. Harris blamed herself for the affair and her marriage collapsing, Ms. Phillips testified. The private investigator said Dr. Harris told her she had been paying more attention to her 3-year-old twin boys than to her husband.
"It was like she opened up the door of her home for this woman to come in and steal her husband," Ms. Phillips testified. "I could tell she cared about her husband. I could tell she cared about her children."
Ms. Phillips said Dr. Harris hired the firm to follow her husband on the night of July 24 and then to follow Ms. Bridges for the next two days. Dr. Harris told the private investigator that she thought Ms. Bridges was after her husband's money and that her husband was being deceived and couldn't see clearly because he had fallen in love.
Specifically, Ms. Phillips testified, Dr. Harris wanted more information about Ms. Bridges' relationship with a woman she reportedly lived with.
"Is it fair to say Clara Harris believed these two women were involved in a lesbian relationship?" defense attorney George Parnham asked Ms. Phillips.
"Yes, she told me that," the private investigator testified. "She wanted some documentation of that to show her husband."
Dr. Harris wrote a check for more than $1,500 to cover the three days of surveillance.
Later, the first police officer on the scene testified that it didn't appear that David Harris had been hit numerous times.
Then prosecutor Mia Magness asked Officer Frank Reyna, who works in the Houston suburb of Nassau Bay, how often he has seen bodies that have been struck numerous times. He replied he had seen it only in movies.
Prosecutors used the appearances by Officer Reyna and Detective Theresa Relken to show jurors evidence that they gathered at the scene, including a dislodged tooth, a bloody shirt button and blood-soaked towels that a bystander used to wipe the orthodontist's face as he lay dying.
Ms. Bridges seemed stunned and was unresponsive to questions after the collision, leading police to send her to a nearby hospital, Officer Reyna said. Dr. Harris sobbed before she was handcuffed and taken away.
Detective Relken testified that she photographed bruises on Dr. Harris' right arm as evidence of the fight between her and Ms. Bridges in the hotel lobby. The detective said the bruises on Dr. Harris' arm appeared to be fresh.
But under cross-examination by Mr. Parnham, Detective Relken said some of the bruises on Dr. Harris' arm were different colors, suggesting some may have been older than others.
If convicted, Dr. Harris faces up to life in prison. If jurors determine she acted under the legal definition of sudden passion, they could consider a lighter sentence of two to 20 years in prison.
Witness: Wife blamed dentist after car struck him - 'David, look what you made me do'
I'll post the Houston Chronicle article on yesterday's trial coverage on this thread in a minute...
Jan. 28, 2003, 12:35AM
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EXTRA
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 Clara Harris watches Monday as bloody evidence from the crime scene is introduced. She is accused of running over her husband after catching him with his former receptionist at a hotel. • From the arrest to the trial Video: The trial: • The indictment • What we know about them • The experts: Why they're split over jurors  Preparing for the trial: Video report from Jan. 19.• Day 1: Hotel employees tell what they saw • Day 2: Grainy videotape reveals little From the Chronicle's archives: • The story of Clara and David Harris: They epitomized success and happiness, but underneath the facade... - Jan. 19 • The wife: Mother of twins kept to herself - Aug. 4 • The mistress: Mistress not a stranger to the spotlight - Aug. 4 • The married couple: Victim wanted to end marriage - July 27 |
Harris, 44, is on trial on murder charges, accused of repeatedly running over her orthodontist husband outside a Clear Lake-area hotel July 24.
She occasionally dabbed tears from her eyes Monday as Harris County Assistant District Attorney Mia Magness questioned private investigator Claudine Phillips about Harris' arrangements to have her husband followed.
Phillips, who coordinates investigations for Webster-based Blue Moon Investigations, said Harris was "very professional, composed, straightforward" during their first meeting on the morning of July 23.
"You could tell she really loved him," Phillips said. "She said he was a good man who had fallen into a trap. She said that over and over again. ... He had been deceived by a woman taking him for his money."
During the 45-minute meeting, in which Harris agreed to pay $1,547.98 to have her husband and his lover, Gail Bridges, trailed for three days, she expressed remorse for the way she had treated him, Phillips said.
She recounted that Clara Harris, a dentist, blamed herself for focusing on the couple's young twin sons rather than on her husband. At one point she admitted that a short vacation she had taken abroad might have provided an opportunity for Bridges to make her play, Phillips testified.
"I think Clara blames herself (for her husband's infidelity)," lead defense attorney George Parnham told reporters after court adjourned for the day. "It remains to be seen how much of that self-blame was an evaluation of what she did or did not do and how much was a result of a critique by her husband."
Harris told Phillips she had confronted Bridges at her husband's orthodontics office, where the 39-year-old, divorced mother of three worked as a receptionist.
Harris fired Bridges, becoming so angry, she told Phillips later, that she couldn't even recall what Bridges looked like. Phillips said Harris hired a Blue Moon investigator to trail her husband and Bridges to a Clear Lake-area restaurant where David Harris had agreed to call off the affair.
She also asked the agency to try to document a lesbian relationship she had been told existed between Bridges and her roommate, Phillips said. Included in the contract Harris signed with the agency was a stipulation that she would not show up at any investigation site.
That clause, Phillips told jurors, was to ensure the safety of the client, the investigator and the subject.
On July 24, less than an hour before the investigation was to begin, Harris arrived at Phillips' office to deliver a photo of Bridges and to provide the license plate number of her husband's automobile. With her was Lindsey Harris, her husband's teenage daughter from a previous marriage.
Phillips testified that Harris appeared to be "frantic" and in a "frenzy," swinging from agitation to composure.
At one point she became tearful, proclaiming that detective agency gumshoes were her "best friends."
"But before we could hand her a box of Kleenex," Phillips testified, "she had stopped crying."
Lindsey, she said, seemed inappropriately awed at being at a detective agency.
"She was teenagerish," Phillips said. "She thought it was cool."
Phillips testified that Harris left the office without handing over the photo of Bridges she ostensibly had come to deliver.
The testimony topped a day largely devoted to verbally revisiting the scene of David Harris' death, the parking lot of the Nassau Bay Hilton, at 3000 NASA Road 1.
Frank Reyna, then a Nassau Bay police patrolman, arrived there to find the victim lying in the parking lot while a hotel employee restrained a disconsolate Clara Harris.
Although she was sobbing, Reyna noted she was "not out of control" and, once handcuffed and placed in a police car, she quickly composed herself.
"Her level of upset came down," Reyna said. "She took deep breaths and sat there, and I didn't hear or see her crying."
Reyna also encountered Bridges in the parking lot and took her to police headquarters for questioning as a witness. Bridges, however, "faded in and out" of consciousness and complained of being painfully cold.
Police halted their attempted questioning and had her taken to a Clear Lake hospital, Reyna said.
Much of Monday afternoon was devoted to testimony from Nassau Bay police Detective Theresa Relkin, who, under Magness' questioning, methodically recounted her investigation at the scene.
Evidence that Relkin collected from the Hilton parking lot -- including one of the victim's teeth and part of his toupee -- was introduced as evidence.
As Magness entered into evidence two bloody towels taken from the scene, Harris cradled her face in her folded hands and quietly wept.
Earlier Monday, state District Judge Carol G. Davies ruled inadmissible -- at least for the moment -- a tape of a July 26 conversation in which Harris asked Blue Moon Vice President Bobbi Bacha for a partial refund because the investigation had not been completed.
Harris' trial will continue today with more testimony from police, defense attorney Parnham said.
The defendant's stepdaughter, Lindsey, probably will take the stand for the prosecution Wednesday, Parnham said.
If convicted of murder, Harris could be sentenced to life in prison, or receive as short a sentence as two years if the jury concludes she acted with "sudden passion."
She could be eligible for probation if she is sentenced to 10 years or less.
Ms. Phillips told the jury that Dr. Harris hired Blue Moon InvestigationsDavid or Maddie?
That's when you cry throughout the trial and your attorney argues that punishing her will only punish her children. I understand the jury is nine women and three men so, already, we're in for an Oprah verdict.
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