La Jolla

A jury on Friday awarded about $2.2 million in wrongful death and punitive damages to Kathryn Crake, the widow of an attorney who was murdered in 1981 in La Jolla.

However, the award was viewed as a loss by attorneys for the La Jolla widow because $1.9 million of the award was lodged against Andrew Powell, who is indigent and serving 15-years-to-life in state prison for killing Richard Crake.

The jury awarded $217,500 in wrongful death damages and $127,500 in punitive damages against Powell’s former employer, Herman Martin, 64, who was also convicted of second-degree murder in 1982 and is serving 15-years-to-life in state prison.

The jury lodged $217,500 in compensatory damages against the Wackenhut Corporation, the security firm that guarded the Windemere complex where the Crakes lived.

The Crake attorneys had asked the jury to award $29 million against the defendants. Before the trial, Kathryn Crake turned down an offer to settle the case for $1,375,000 from attorneys for Martin and the Wackenhut Corporation, according to attorney Peter Ezzell, who represented Martin’s insurance company.

The jury awarded no damages for emotional distress. Co-defendants Florence Martin, the wife of Herman Martin, and Anear Insurance Company, which was owned by the Martins, had no damages lodged against them.

Richard Crake’s male lover, Ken Grider, 32, of Los Angeles, testified as a witness for the defendants about how much time Richard Crake spent with him daily before he was killed. The defendants’ attorneys had argued that the Crake marriage was doomed because of the love affair and would not have survived had he lived.