Man Testifies He Was Paid to Beat Wayne, Boyfriend

One of the men accused of beating John Wayne’s daughter and her boyfriend testified Tuesday that he was hired by a private investigator who told him that a doctor client involved in a child custody battle wanted to “teach his wife a lesson.”

Jeffrey Kendall Bouey, 35, of Simi Valley, said the investigator never mentioned by name Aissa Wayne’s ex-husband, Pomona surgeon Thomas A. Gionis, who is charged with masterminding the Oct. 3 attack against Wayne, 32, and Roger W. Luby, 53, at Luby’s Newport Beach estate.

Gionis has denied the charge.

But Bouey said the investigator showed him and an accomplice photos of Wayne and Luby, described the client’s car as a black stretch limousine and provided them with a floor plan of Wayne’s Corona del Mar home, where the attack was originally intended to take place.

Gionis, 35, has a black stretch limousine and visited the homes of Wayne and Luby in order to pick up an infant daughter by his former marriage to Wayne, according to testimony in his preliminary hearing this week in Harbor Municipal Court.

The couple were in the midst of a custody battle over 2-year-old Anastasia when the incident occurred. Gionis was awarded custody of the child in February, but Wayne won temporary custody last week pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings against her ex-husband. Gionis is being held in the Orange County Jail without bail.

Bouey, being held in lieu of $1 million bail on charges of assault with a deadly weapon in the attack, testified Tuesday that he did not know the identity of the two victims until two days after the attack, when the investigator, O. Daniel Gal of Beverly Hills, mentioned that the woman was the daughter of the late actor.

During five hours on the stand--much of it under grueling cross-examination by Gionis’ lead attorney, F. Lee Bailey--Bouey portrayed himself as a reticent participant in the crime, while casting blame for all the violence that took place on his partner and longtime friend, Jerrel L. Hintergardt, 37, an unemployed apartment manager from Burbank.

Hintergardt, described in police reports as a neo-Nazi, is also jailed in lieu of $1-million bail, charged with assault with a deadly weapon.