Jury Says Woman Who Shot Spouse to Death Was Sane

SANTA ANA —  Ardith Cribbs was legally sane when she handcuffed her high-ranking game warden husband to a bed and fatally shot him five times in the legs, groin, back and head, a Superior Court jury decided Wednesday.

Cribbs, convicted by the same jury of first-degree murder earlier this month, faces up to 30 years to life in prison when she is sentenced March 29.

Relatives of her slain husband, Gordan L. Cribbs, hugged and nodded their heads in approval upon hearing the jury’s verdict on the sanity issue, reached after about two hours of deliberations.

“She got what she deserved,” said Hal Cribbs, the victim’s brother, describing the 39-year-old woman as a “con artist” who was “conning the whole trial.”

The defendant’s attorney, Peter Larkin, declined comment except to say his client is crazy. “She was then, she is now,” he said.

Cribbs, who had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, testified that she didn’t believe until just months ago that her husband--her fourth--was even dead.

“I did not want to kill him, not at all,” she testified. “He was really good to me.”

Jurors said Wednesday they believe that the woman has mental problems but that she knew right from wrong when she pulled the trigger.

Kristine Jameson, one of 10 women on the jury, said the sanity question was the most difficult issue to decide.

“It’s very hard to see something like that,” said Jameson, 32. “But the facts were all right there.”

Had the jury found Cribbs legally insane at the time of the crime, she would have been treated at a state psychiatric hospital until she was declared legally sane.

Gordan Cribbs, a 49-year-old regional patrol chief for the state Department of Fish and Game, was found dead Aug. 10, 1994, in the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife of three years. Two acquaintances who found his body also found Ardith Cribbs unconscious in a bathroom, where she had taken a drug overdose in a possible suicide attempt.

The gun used in the shooting and an apparent suicide note written by Ardith Cribbs, in which she said she was sorry for what she had done, were also found in the house, according to trial testimony.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood contended that while Cribbs may have mental problems, she knew what she was doing when she repeatedly shot her husband, and had told others she wanted to kill him.

“She had indicated that she hated him, even within days after marrying him,” Kirkwood said. “So I do think that the largest part of the motivation for the crime was a buildup of angry feelings.”

Cribbs also stood to inherit the home her husband owned, Kirkwood said.

The defendant worked as a prostitute at two Nevada brothels before getting a clerical job with the Department of Fish and Game in Long Beach, where she told a co-worker she was looking for a “single, successful, high-ranking man,” the prosecutor had told jurors.

She married Gordan Cribbs, a 26-year veteran with the department, in 1991. The father of three had been devastated years earlier when his marriage of 22 years ended in divorce, according to testimony.

The defense attorney sought to portray Ardith Cribbs as 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.

She had been molested by a relative from ages 6 to 16 and suffered from sleeping and eating disorders, her attorney told jurors. Her mental problems included delusions that other people, including her husband, were constantly watching and controlling her, he said.