A Look Back:

Irene Tucker, wife of Costa Mesa City Councilman George Tucker, felt like she had to defend herself from her 68-year-old neighbor on June 28, 1968, when she pulled a long roast knife and shorter paring knife out of a drawer in her kitchen and chased the woman into the street in front of her home on Minorca Drive.

The neighbors had recently quarreled about the constant barking of one of the Tuckers’ two dogs, Butch and Fluff.

“I kept circling her and she circled me,” petite, dark-haired Irene Tucker, 37, later told an Orange County Superior Court jury while on trial for the murder of Harriet Westphal.

Westphal was the wife of an aeronutronic unit supervisor in Anaheim, who lived next door to the Tuckers, the Los Angeles Times reported June 29, 1968. She died after staggering from her home and collapsing at the feet of another neighbor that day.

Westphal died of a single stab wound to her right side “with a long-bladed sharp instrument,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Irene Tucker refused to let police into home after the stabbing.

George Tucker, who had been a councilman for two years, was summoned from his job at United California Bank to open the door.

“My first duty is to my wife and family,” George Tucker told the Los Angeles Times after his wife was arrested. “I’ll do all I can to defend them.”

The couple had two daughters, Kathleen, then age 12, and Karen, who was 10 at the time of the stabbing.

There were no witnesses to the scuffle between Westphal and Irene Tucker, but the councilwoman’s wife had scratches on her neck and forehead, and police later found a bloody sweater between the Tucker and Westphal homes, according to contemporary news accounts.

At trial, psychiatrists who had examined Irene Tucker testified she was psychotic and a paranoid schizophrenic.

During Irene Tucker’s testimony, she described an epic battle between the two housewives that day in June in which Westphal struck her with a garden hose and slammed her head against a fence. Irene Tucker told the jury she grabbed two knives to defend herself.

“At one point in her testimony, Mrs. Tucker screamed: ‘I’m not going to believe that she is dead. I know what I did. The knife pierced the clothing only,’” the Times reported in October 1968.

A jury rejected Irene Tucker’s insanity defense and found her guilty.

“I’ve been in jail almost three months. I don’t want to go back to jail,” Irene Tucker reportedly wailed after the verdict was read.

She was later sentenced to five years in prison at the state institution for woman at Frontera.

At her sentencing, Irene Tucker continued to insist that Westphal was still alive.

“It’s funny, but Mrs. Westphal came (to the county jail) every Saturday,” she turned and said to her husband in court after the sentence was read, the Times reported. “She’s with the Assembly of God Church and she does a lot of shouting. She calls herself Mrs. Woodcock, but it’s Mrs. Westphal.”

George Tucker made no audible reply, but kissed his wife good bye before leaving the courtroom that day, the Times reported. He filed for divorce soon after the trial.

George Tucker lost his Costa Mesa City Council seat to Jack Hammett in April 1970, finishing third in a three-way race, the Los Angeles Times reported.