Man Sued in Wife’s Death Listed as Critical After Airplane Crash

A Huntington Beach man, part of a highly publicized court battle over how his wife’s $1.2-million estate will be divided, remained in critical condition Wednesday after an airplane crash earlier this week north of San Diego.

Kenneth Barwick, 38, who was piloting a single-engine Piper Warrior, and his passenger were severely injured Monday when the plane lost power shortly after taking off from a small airstrip near Escondido. Witnesses said the wing of the aircraft clipped a tree and the plane “cartwheeled” to the ground. Barwick’s passenger was identified only as Gary Barni, 39.

Barwick’s stepchildren have sued him, alleging that he is not entitled to a share of their mother’s estate. They allege that he was responsible for her death, which occurred after the Barwicks swam from a boat that had sunk in the Caribbean in 1986.

Hospital spokesmen said both Barwick and Barni were in critical condition, suffering from severe head injuries and multiple fractures. Barwick was in Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, and Barni was in Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.

Jim Wall, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said Barwick had a student pilot’s certificate that did not allow him to carry any passenger except a licensed instructor. Wall said Barni was not an instructor.

Newport Beach attorney Maurice Mandel, who once represented Barwick, said Barwick was flying to northern San Diego County because he was building a new home near Escondido. An investigator said the airplane apparently was bound for Meadowlark Airport in Huntington Beach.

Nancy Barwick, whom Barwick married in Las Vegas in 1984, died after a boating accident near the island of Aruba in 1985. Authorities said the ship that the couple were operating began sinking. The Barwicks and crew made it to a lifeboat, but the lifeboat capsized. They swam to Aruba, but Nancy Barwick died after reaching shore. Aruba officials listed the cause of her death as a heart attack.

In a wrongful death suit filed in 1986, her children from a previous marriage claimed that Barwick was responsible for her death and kept news of it from them for several days to find and conceal her will.

From her first marriage to an Orange County doctor, Nancy Barwick had accumulated real estate assets of more than $1 million.

Barwick insisted that he fought desperately to save his wife after the ship accident. He claims that his stepchildren are trying to deny him his right as surviving spouse to his third of her estate.

A judge ordered Nancy Barwick’s body exhumed from a Long Beach cemetery. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office showed that she died of natural causes. The autopsy eliminated trauma, strangulation or toxin as possible causes of death, the coroner’s office said.

Lawyers for Nancy Barwick’s children said the findings did not hurt their case because the cause of death will be determined later by a jury. The trial is scheduled to begin this summer.