Suspect in lawyer's murder shows shock in trial videotape

STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) The 22-year-old art student accused of helping murder a Sacramento attorney gasped, her mouth agape, when detectives told her the attorney's body had been found, according to a videotape of the interview.

The videotape shown to jurors during her trial shows Sarah Dutra answering questions until midway through the interview a year ago, when San Joaquin County Sheriff's Detective Robert Buchwalter told her they had found the body of 52-year-old Woodbridge resident Larry McNabney.

He was last seen Sept. 10, 2001, at a Southern California horse show. His wife, ``Elisa'' real name, Laren Sims disappeared in January 2002, but was later arrested in Florida. Sims confessed to murdering her husband and implicated Dutra in the crime before hanging herself in jail.

``You are in this right up to your eyeballs. It's not a game anymore,'' Buchwalter told Dutra during the videotaped interview, conducted two days after McNabney's body was found buried in a Clements vineyard, and before Sims' arrest.

``I'm telling you that I have not heard from her. I would love to hear from her,'' Dutra said.

She suggested to the detectives that drug dealers may have killed McNabney, recalling that Sims told her McNabney would go on drug binges.

She said Sims told her McNabney was on drugs and ``acting crazy'' in their hotel room the day the two women used a wheelchair to move him to his truck. She told detectives that Sims dropped her off, and she never saw McNabney again.

Tests found no illicit drugs in McNabney's body, but a lethal dose of horse tranquilizers.

Dutra faces charges of murder and accessory to murder.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)