Video Shown in Abortion Clinic Trial : Court: Administrator who faces murder charges insisted on her innocence in 1993 taped police interview.

An abortion clinic administrator accused of the murder of one of her patients insisted on her innocence in a taped interview with police that was played in court for the first time Thursday.

Alicia Hanna, who was allegedly caught by witnesses trying to stuff the victim’s body into the trunk of a car, told skeptical Santa Ana police investigators during the Jan. 19 interrogation that she had only tried to help the woman.

“I did not do anything bad,” Hanna said in the interview with the investigators who had brought her in for questioning the night the woman died. “I was there for her. I’m innocent.”

Hanna is charged with the murder of 27-year-old Angela Nieto Sanchez, an Orange woman who police say went to Hanna’s clinic in January, 1993, seeking an abortion. She is accused of injecting the woman with an unknown drug, and refusing to call 911 after the woman began vomiting and foaming at the mouth.

Sanchez’s 12-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were waiting outside the clinic as their mother died, then were sent home with an uncle by Hanna after an assistant told them their mother had left without them, prosecutors contend.

Relatives told investigators that when they returned to the clinic to find Sanchez later that night, they discovered Hanna attempting to hoist the dead woman’s body into the trunk of Sanchez’s car.

But in the taped interview, Hanna gives a very different version of events that night. She insisted to investigators that she never injected Sanchez and that the two had “only talked” about a possible abortion.

She said Sanchez then left the clinic and that she didn’t see her again until several hours later, when a man drove an unconscious Sanchez into her driveway and took off running.

Hanna said she was trying to drag Sanchez out of the car to help her when Sanchez’s relatives drove up.

“She was really cold,” Hanna said in the interview. “And I was trying to pull her out. . . . I didn’t know if she had fainted or she was dead. I never touched a dead body before.”

Hanna’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Steve Biskar, has said that Sanchez died before an abortion was performed and a subsequent botched autopsy on her body has concealed the true cause of the woman’s death.

But several times during the interview, Santa Ana investigators Ruben Zambrano and Phillip Lozano pointed out discrepancies between Hanna’s story and the claims of Sanchez’s relatives, who, the investigators contended, had no reason to lie.

They accused Hanna of “playing games” and urged her to tell them the truth. Investigators also noted during the interview that she never expressed regret over the incident.

“I cried,” Hanna protested. “I cried with her daughter.”

“You were crying for yourself,” one of the investigators responded.

“We’ve been here for hours and you’ve shown no remorse,” Lozano said.

“What do you want me to do, cry so that you think it’s my fault?” Hanna asked. “Come on. Give me a break.”

The trial is scheduled to continue Monday, when Sanchez’s daughter, now 13, is expected to take the stand.