Wayne’s Attacker Gets 8 Year-Term

SANTA ANA —  Jerrel Lee Hintergardt, who stunned even his own lawyer by admitting his involvement in the 1988 assault on John Wayne’s daughter and her then-boyfriend, was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison, the maximum possible term.

Hintergardt’s attorney told jurors last month that his client was at a Los Angeles hospital for an adjustment on his artificial foot when Aissa Wayne and financier Roger W. Luby were attacked the morning of Oct. 3, 1988, in the garage of Luby’s Newport Beach estate. But moments before he was scheduled to testify, Hintergardt, 38, told his attorney, Todd A. Landgren, that he had been lying to him; he was at the Luby estate that day.

Prosecutors contend that Wayne’s ex-husband, Dr. Thomas A. Gionis, had ordered the attack during a bitter custody dispute over their 2-year-old daughter.