Stepmother Tells Court She Had No Respect for Couple

The Newport Beach woman accused of killing her stepdaughter’s husband by running over him with her Mercedes-Benz described him Tuesday as crude and without class, prompting the victim’s grandmother to leave the courtroom in tears.

In her second day of testimony, Betty Young Davies testified that she believed that her stepdaughter, Wendy Ward, had shown poor judgment in marrying James Ward, who died of head injuries three days after allegedly being thrown from the hood of Davies’ car on Dec. 19, 1989. James Ward, Davies said, was crude, used poor English and swore.

“I didn’t have any respect for them, let’s put it that way,” Davies said.

Davies’ remarks drove the victim’s sobbing grandmother from the courtroom. She later returned.

Davies, a Lido Isle resident, is charged with vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving. In two days of testimony, she has said James Ward jumped onto the hood of her car and began bashing at her windshield with his right arm. It was only after she thought he was going to kill her that she drove off, she said, unaware that he had been thrown from the car and was injured.

Under questioning from Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis R. Rosenblum, Davies admitted that she made harassing telephone calls to the Wards, hanging up before they could answer, then immediately re-dialing.

Davies, who told her attorney, Marshall M. Schulman, during testimony Monday that she didn’t know why she had parked outside the Wards’ Costa Mesa home on the night of the incident, for the first time offered an explanation on why she had lurked outside the Congress Street residence.

Davies, who turned 60 on Tuesday, said she had started out headed for a yogurt shop in her maroon Mercedes 500 SEL but instead ended up in front of the Ward home, several miles away. She told Rosenblum that she had wanted to see the house since the Wards purchased it because she had heard that Wendy Ward had made the down payment from tips she received from her waitressing job.

“I may have been still curious to see the house,” Davies said.