Trial Figure’s Future in the Cards

Sukhreet Gabel, whose hapless search for employment led to the now-infamous Bess Myerson alimony-fixing case, has finally found her calling: She’s the subject of a new line of greeting cards. A plump Gabel, 40, is shown prancing about in a variety of funky costumes striking provocative poses on a line of eight Heart to Heart Co. cards that were exhibited this week at a New York stationery show. The cards, inscribed with “Now Playing” at the top, show Gabel in different theatrical roles. On one of them, titled “Sukhreet in Dumbstruck,” she poses with a full moon in the background. The message reads: “Ah, silly me . . . when I think of you and the full moon . . . I confuse the two! Happy birthday to you and your heavenly body!” Gabel’s mother, retired New York State Supreme Court Justice Hortense W. Gabel, and Myerson, a former Miss America and one-time New York City commissioner of consumer affairs, were acquitted last year of charges that Myerson had given Sukhreet Gabel a job at the time her mother was deciding to reduce the alimony payments of Myerson’s boyfriend, co-defendant Carl (Andy) Capasso. Capasso was also acquitted.

--A London court ordered Britain’s daring satirical magazine Private Eye to pay the wife of the mass murderer known as the Yorkshire Ripper libel damages that could force the magazine out of business. The $942,000 award to Sonia Sutcliffe, 38, was the second-highest libel award in Britain and the highest ever awarded by a jury. The magazine was sued for a series of articles alleging that Sutcliffe sold her story to a newspaper for $392,500 and implying she knew about her husband’s murderous activities. Peter Sutcliffe was jailed for life in 1981 for 13 killings which terrorized northern England’s red light districts. He preyed mainly on prostitutes, savagely slashing them to death with a screwdriver and chisel. Private Eye’s editor Ian Hislop gasped when he heard the verdict. He declared: “We cannot possibly pay that amount of damages. . . . If this is justice, I am a banana.”

--Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, whose affair with an airline stewardess has caused political repercussions, could marry his girlfriend before next month’s elections, his lawyers said. Papandreou, 70, filed a new petition for divorce and his American wife, Margaret, appeared to agree unconditionally to end their 39-year marriage by mutual consent. Papandreou acknowledged for the first time last week that his extramarital affair with Dimitra Liani, 34, hurt the standing of his Panhellenic Socialist Movement in opinion polls.