Wayne Assault Case Retrial Gets Underway : Court: In opening statements, defense attorney scorns victims’ lifestyle while prosecutor portrays defendant as ‘field general.’

A flamboyant New York attorney Tuesday portrayed John Wayne’s daughter Aissa and her former boyfriend more as villains than victims as the retrial in a celebrated assault case opened in a crowded courtroom.

Attorney Bruce Cutler, best known for his successful defense of New York mobster John Gotti, is representing Dr. Thomas A. Gionis, who is charged with masterminding a vicious assault on Wayne, his estranged wife at the time, and her then-boyfriend, developer Roger W. Luby.

Prosecutors charge that Gionis, a 38-year-old orthopedic surgeon, paid a private investigator to arrange the assault at Luby’s Newport Beach estate on Oct. 3, 1988. The motive, they argue, was anger growing out of a bitter custody battle for the couple’s daughter, Anastasia. In a 1990 trial, the jury declared itself deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of conviction.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson, acknowledging that there were “no saints on either side” of the custody fight, relied on military and mythological terminology in laying out his case against the Pomona doctor. In the process, he was as methodical and low-key as Cutler was bombastic.

For much of his opening statement to the jury, Cutler appeared to be waging class war against all of Newport Beach, heaping scorn and contempt on Wayne’s and Luby’s values and lifestyles. These he contrasted against those of his client, whom he portrayed as an educated, hard-working son of Greek immigrants.

Cutler jumped, bounced on his toes, stalked the courtroom, appropriated prosecution props and strained his form-fitting, double-breasted suit. The spectator section of the courtroom was packed with lawyers, journalists and regular court watchers.

Robinson told the jury that Gionis was “a very charming man, but when things don’t go his way . . . that charm does a 180 (degree) turn.” Gionis, he said, was motivated by “rage and vengeance.”

According to the prosecutor, Gionis acted as a “field general” who gave orders through a chain of command to his “lieutenant,” Century City private investigator Oded Daniel Gal. More than just an employee, Robinson said, Gal was “Tom Gionis’ guy,” a man who became his friend and, ultimately, his co-conspirator.

Gal, Robinson said, directed two “soldiers,” Jerrel Hintergardt and Jeffrey K. Bouey, to follow Wayne and Luby into Luby’s garage.

Repeated telephone conversations--including one on the day of the attack--between Gionis and Gal and between Gal and the others were referred to by the prosecutor as “communiques.” A conversation after the attack, in which Luby was pistol-whipped and Wayne had her head slammed against the concrete floor, was referred to as a “debriefing.”

Robinson also made reference to Gionis’ occupation and Greek heritage in describing another wound inflicted on Luby, a regular tennis player.

Hintergardt, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for his role in the attack, admitted that he slashed--but did not sever--one of Luby’s Achilles’ tendons and attempted to cut the other.

As a Greek-American, Robinson said, Gionis must have been well aware of the symbolism of that spot behind the heel, which betrayed the only weakness of the mythical hero of the Trojan War, and as a surgeon must have known the damage that severing the tendon could do.

Robinson said several times that Gionis’ aim was to carve out “a pound of flesh” as part of a personal “vendetta.”

Cutler explained to jurors that the couple’s custody battle “is inextricably tied to this case” and repeatedly accused Wayne of “warehousing” her daughter so as not to interfere with her vapid and indulgent lifestyle.

The day before the assault, Cutler said, was “a typical, usual, ordinary, average day for the former Mrs. Gionis, Aissa Wayne.” He said that she had left her daughter in the care of two maids who spoke little English and had spent the night at Luby’s home. That day, he said, “she didn’t do anything, and accomplished nothing.”

The “engagement that caused her to spend the night at Roger Luby’s was a pressing, significant, important aerobics class,” Cutler said.

Wayne had “no job, no nothing,” preferring to be “out gallivanting while the maids took care of the baby,” Cutler said.

Often, he said, Wayne “went from vacation to vacation . . . to get a vacation from a vacation,” rarely taking her daughter with her.

“She had too much to do,” he said. “Vacations, aerobics class, tennis--all those important things that made this country great. All the things people fought and died for.”

Cutler then turned his attention to Luby, who, he charged, was the real target of the attack, an attack that he said did not come from Gionis.

Luby was a “professional litigant,” a “smart aleck” and a “wise guy” whose bankruptcy and gambling debts left him with enemies to spare, Cutler said. Aissa Wayne was simply “at the wrong place at the wrong time” on the morning of the assault.

“Tom Gionis had nothing to do with this assault,” Cutler said. “He had no motive for it.”

Cutler denied that there was any direct evidence to connect Gionis to the “two bums” who have admitted committing the assault. He suggested that other, more likely suspects might be “some tennis partner . . . or some aerobics instructor they were nasty to.”