Posted on 02/08/2003 6:58:04 AM PST by Bubba_Leroy
Fueled by anger over her husband's affair, Clara Harris was trying to smash his lover's luxury sport-utility vehicle when she inadvertently ran over him, she testified Friday.
Clara Harris, a dentist who took the stand Wednesday in her murder trial, was emotional but composed as she recounted the evening of July 24, when she and her stepdaughter caught orthodontist David Harris and lover Gail Bridges at a suburban hotel where they had met for a tryst.
"I was in so much pain, it was a physical pain that I was feeling. I wasn't thinking anything," Harris said, describing how she returned to her car after brawling with Bridges inside the Nassau Bay Hilton lobby.
"Suddenly, I thought about smashing my car against her car and then I (picked) up speed."
Clara Harris saw three figures near Bridges' black Lincoln Navigator. Two dodged right, she said, but her husband moved left, toward her approaching Mercedes.
"I saw some surprised eyes," Clara Harris said.
She veered around the Navigator toward a grassy median within the hotel parking lot when, she says, things got fuzzy.
"I think I closed my eyes. After that, I didn't know who was driving," Clara Harris said, often using hand motions to punctuate her words. "Everything seemed like a dream."
Clara Harris said she snapped out of it when her stepdaughter, 16-year-old Lindsey Harris, was screaming for her to stop. That's when she got out and saw her husband lying on the pavement.
"I saw David and I couldn't understand what he was doing there," she said. "I had just seen him running and I didn't know how he got there.
"I said, 'David, David, please talk to me."'
Blood streamed from his ears and his mouth and eyes were slightly open, she said.
"I checked his heartbeat and pulse. Both were good, but fast," she said. She then called for an ambulance.
"Everything was in slow motion. I don't know if my voice came out," she said.
Clara Harris gave her statement to police around 5 a.m. because she "just wanted to talk to somebody." Then, as now, she said the fatal collision was an accident.
Prosecutors contend she intentionally ran down her philandering husband, who had been dating a receptionist at his Johnson Space Center-area practice since May 2002.
On cross-examination, Assistant Harris County District Attorney Mia Magness repeatedly fired the line "You got what you wanted, didn't you?" at Clara Harris, who did not appear to wither under the pressure.
Magness attempted to dispell any sympathy defense attorney George Parnham might have built earlier in the day by noting the couple's practices pulled in between $50,000 to $60,000 monthly, with David Harris earning the lion's share.
Magness insinuated a divorce could damage the lucrative family business.
"There would not be any more dream of the two of us," Clara Harris said. "There would be another dream I presume."
Clara Harris consistenly testified she wasn't angry — only hurt — about the infidelity until Magness got her to acknowledge her emotions hardened when she saw Bridges' Navigator, which she vandalized before attacking her in the lobby on July 24.
Leading up to her dramatic description of the collision, Clara Harris said she had worked tirelessly for a week since learning of the affair.
On July 18, the day after he confessed to sleeping with Bridges, David Harris and his wife spent an evening at a Houston airport bar going over the attributes and liabilities of each woman in exacting detail.
Clara Harris took notes on bar napkins, which were introduced into evidence. While Clara Harris might have had a slight edge in appearance and intelligence, he said his adulterous lover was a better listener.
The napkins revealed Friday that David Harris thought his wife was overweight, "dominated conversations without letting anyone else talk" and was a workaholic, all in contrast to Bridges, whom he described as "petite with the perfect fit to sleep with, holding her all night."
Clara Harris said she was stunned by the remark.
"I couldn't believe he could sleep holding her all night because we had never slept like that, never," Clara Harris said of her 10 years of marriage.
According to Clara Harris' notes, David Harris seemed fixated on Bridges' breast size, though he gave his wife higher marks for "much prettier hands and feet" and "prettier eyes" as he compared the women in exacting detail.
"He told me, 'I would love you when you get your boobs to just be around the house waiting for me,"' Clara Harris said. She testified she quit her job that week, which she spent scheduling the liposuction and breast enlargement surgeries, going to a tanning salon, getting her hair done daily and working out at a fitness center.
Magness later contended it was Clara Harris who decided to engage Bridges in a competition for David Harris.
"You can sit here and you can tell us you were making the list of David's requests, but we have no way of knowing," Magness said.
Parnham returned to court after the trial was suspended Wednesday, when he buckled in a courthouse hallway and was rushed by ambulance to an area hospital.
His associates said a mix of the flu and stress caused the fainting spell and there was no serious medical problem.
Clara Harris took notes on bar napkins, which were introduced into evidence. While Clara Harris might have had a slight edge in appearance and intelligence, he said his adulterous lover was a better listener.
The napkins revealed Friday that David Harris thought his wife was overweight, "dominated conversations without letting anyone else talk" and was a workaholic, all in contrast to Bridges, whom he described as "petite with the perfect fit to sleep with, holding her all night."
According to Clara Harris' notes, David Harris seemed fixated on Bridges' breast size, though he gave his wife higher marks for "much prettier hands and feet" and "prettier eyes" as he compared the women in exacting detail.
"He told me, 'I would love you when you get your boobs to just be around the house waiting for me,"' Clara Harris said.
Sounds like they are going for the "he needed killin'" defense.
That's a fact, which my wife never hesitates to remind me of.
Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) said it best during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When asked what he would do if he were in Clinton's position he replied, "If I were, I would be looking up from a pool of blood and hearing my wife say : 'How do I reload this thing?'"
The big problem for her is that the only evidence of abuse is her "recollection." She also sounds like a shrew in general and a clever defense would introduce evidence of that. I doubt the jury will buy it, at least completely, but stranger things have happened. The prosecutor sounds incompetent, unfortunately, which sadly is often the case.
Aren't his parents supporting her? They were, I think.
More unbelieveable than this heartless, cruel cad is that this woman actually particpated in this "examination."
I would have spit in his eye and charged adultary in the divorce complaint
I think this makes her sound even more guilty ---any woman who would stay around after being told this is pathetic. I don't think OJ Simpson should have gotten off and neither should Clara Harris.
Did he throw himself in front of her car all three times?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.