Defendant’s Insanity Claim Under Attack

SANTA ANA —  A Huntington Beach woman accused of murdering her fourth husband may be mentally unstable, but she knew what she was doing when she handcuffed him to a bed and shot him five times, a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.

Ardith Cribbs, 39, sat impassively as her trial got underway in the slaying of Gordan L. Cribbs, a high-ranking official with the California Department of Fish and Game.

“The evidence will show she never loved Gordan,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood, who contended that Ardith Cribbs married her husband largely for financial security.

Ardith Cribbs’ defense attorney, however, told jurors that the clerical worker has serious mental and health problems, and never intended to kill her husband. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

“Ardith is mentally ill,” attorney Peter Larkin said. “And this isn’t something that just started in August 1994.”

Ardith Cribbs was taken into custody on suspicion of murder days after two acquaintances found the body of her 49-year-old husband, who had been shot in the legs, groin, back and head.

The visitors also found Ardith Cribbs unconscious in a bathroom on Aug. 10, 1994, and she was taken to a hospital and treated for a drug overdose. The gun used in the shooting and an apparent suicide note written by Ardith Cribbs also were found in the house, Kirkwood said.

Despite her mental problems, Ardith Cribbs was a woman who “got what she wanted,” and Gordan Cribbs was her “target,” the prosecutor told an Orange County Superior Court jury in her opening statement.

Ardith Cribbs had been married three times before and, driven by desire to make more money, worked as a prostitute at two Nevada brothels, Kirkwood said. She later moved to California and took a clerical job with the Fish and Game Department in Long Beach, where she told one person she was looking for a “single, successful, high-ranking man,” the prosecutor said.

She soon met Gordan Cribbs, a 26-year Fish and Game veteran who supervised about 100 wardens and other personnel and was responsible for marine and wildlife protection from Santa Barbara to the Mexico border and the Sierra Nevada. He also worked at the Long Beach office.

Kirkwood said Gordan Cribbs had led a more “sheltered” life in suburban Huntington Beach, and had been devastated in the mid-1980s when his wife of 22 years asked for a divorce, leaving the home in which they had raised three children.

By 1991, he was “clearly smitten” by Ardith Cribbs, 11 years his junior, and they were married in Las Vegas, the prosecutor said. But the feeling was not mutual, the prosecutor said, and Ardith Cribbs told others she wished she had never married him and that she wanted to kill her husband.

The defendant’s attorney presented a different portrayal, describing a woman who was not in control of her actions, with a past of attempted suicides, self-mutilation and hospitalization for hallucinations and other mental problems.

Ardith Cribbs had been molested by a relative from ages 6 to 16, and suffered from sleeping and eating disorders, her lawyer said. Her mental problems included delusions that someone had implanted a device in her brain and could follow her every move, he continued.

“She also believed people were watching her and people were controlling her, as well as Gordan,” he said.

The trial before Judge Francisco P. Briseno is expected to last about two weeks. If Cribbs is found guilty, jurors will come back for a second trial phase to determine if she was sane at the time of the crime.