Local News in Brief : Cook Describes Villagran

Dovie Beams de Villagran, the self-proclaimed ex-mistress of toppled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, was portrayed during her Los Angeles bank fraud trial Wednesday as an offbeat recluse who spent hours crying in the closets of her mansion.

The testimony by a woman who cleaned house and cooked for the former B-movie starlet was presented by the defense, which is trying to show that brain surgery and a mysterious virus rendered Villagran mentally incompetent.

As a result, the defense argues, she could not have lied to 13 banks to get $18 million in loans between 1983 and February, 1986, as federal prosecutors charge.

Testifying through a Spanish interpreter in U.S. District Court, Maria Isabel Handy said she would often find the 55-year-old Villagran curled up in the darkened closets of her sprawling Pasadena mansion, weeping for as long as two days.