Accused murderer: Husband said I was fat
02/07/2003
HOUSTON - The orthodontist who was run over by his Mercedes-driving wife thought she was overweight, too talkative and addicted to her job, she testified Friday.
On the other hand, David Harris thought his lover, Gail Bridges, was "petite with the perfect fit to sleep with, holding her all night," Clara Harris told jurors at her murder trial.
Clara Harris, 45, said her 44-year-old husband compared the two women July 18 as the couple sat in an airport sports bar, she taking notes on napkins. He had admitted the affair a day earlier.
On July 24, she found him with Bridges at a suburban hotel and ran him down him in the parking lot. She says the death was an accident.
AP Defendant Clara Harris reacts as she testifies about her husband's affair. |
Her testimony resumed Friday for the first time since her attorney fell ill around lunchtime Wednesday.
Clara Harris said she was stunned by her husband's remark about holding his lover.
"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.
Periodically, Clara Harris wiped tears or covered her face on the stand, a contrast to her composed demeanor Wednesday.
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. She occasionally looked at the notes she had jotted on the napkins.
"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 as a dentist that week, scheduled liposuction and breast enlargement surgeries, went to a tanning salon and joined a fitness center.
Defense attorney George Parnham, who had recommended that his client refrain from taking the stand, had begun asking his client about the napkin notes Wednesday when the trial broke for lunch. Moments later, the veteran lawyer swooned in a hallway and was taken to a hospital from what his associates said was the combined effects of stress and the flu.
Clara Harris had told jurors during 11/2 hours of testimony Wednesday that David Harris said Bridges, who was also his receptionist, was more submissive to his desires.
"He was referring to vacations. I always had planned where to go," Clara Harris said.
"How did Gail match up?" Parnham asked.
Clara Harris responded: "She let him do whatever he wanted to do."
Prosecutor Mia Magness, who contends that Clara Harris committed murder in a fit of jealousy, had yet to cross-examine Harris, who faces up to life in prison if convicted.
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