LOS ANGELES — Emotional outbursts from the defendant and continual admonishments from the judge marked the second day of testimony in the trial of Sante Kimes, a con woman accused of murdering a California businessman after he refused to cooperate in a bank loan scheme.

At one point, Kimes began sobbing hysterically as a witness took the stand.

"Ms. Kimes, just get control of yourself please," reprimanded Super Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell.

Sante, 69, and her son, Kenneth, 29, are charged with the 1998 malice murder of their former friend David Kazdin.

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Last November, Kenneth unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty and will escape a potential death penalty. As part of his plea agreement he is set to testify against his mother.

Years before his death, Kazdin, 63, agreed to put his name on the title to Sante Kimes' two-story Las Vegas home. In late 1997, she took out a $280,000 loan on the house and allegedly convinced her secretary, Nanette Wetkowski, to forge Kazdin's signature and notarize the loan application.

When Kazdin accidentally received a payment booklet in the mail, however, he called the lending company, which sparked an investigation into the scheme. That's when, prosecutors say, Sante began calling Kazdin, leaving threatening messages urging him to cooperate.

Kenneth is expected to testify that he visited Kazdin's Granda Hills home on March 13, 1998, shot him in the back of the head with a .22 caliber gun, and then disposed of the body in a Dumpster near the Los Angeles airport — all at the bidding of his mother.

Out of control

Alan Russell, an associate of Sante's who helped her prepare the loan paperwork on the Vegas home, testified Tuesday that he had never met Kazdin, but that Sante assured him when she delivered the pre-signed and notarized loan applications that the documents were legitimate.

His presence on the stand drew constant and open weeping from the defendant. At one point during Russell's testimony Kimes hissed, "You murdering liar!"

The judge ordered her to be quiet.

Kimes also turned to Kazdin's daughter, Linda, who was sitting in the courtroom, and mouthed the words, "I didn't do it."

"I couldn't believe it. She's just a freak," Linda told Courttv.com.

On Tuesday morning, prior to the jury's arrival, Kimes argued loudly with her attorney Charles Maple.

"You've got to listen to me and stop trying to tell me what to do!" Maple whispered to her.

Judge Kennedy-Powell stated for the record, outside of the presence of the jurors, that on Monday, Kimes had made a closed-door request to have her attorneys fired and to be allowed to represent herself.

The judge denied the request, calling Kimes a "very manipulative individual," whose "totally bogus claim" that she had a conflict of interest with one of her attorneys was simply another attempt to "manipulate the system" and prolong her trial.

The set-up

Jurors on Tuesday also heard from Nanette Wetkowski, Sante's part-time secretary in Las Vegas, who was unwittingly coerced into Sante's alleged identity-fraud plot.

In 1994, Sante paid the fee required for Wetkowski to become a public notary, and then used her services at her whim.

"Ms. Kimes would hand me a stack of papers as I was rushing out the door and she'd say, 'I need these all to be notarized!'" Wetkowski said, adding that she often signed Kazdin's name on paperwork, because her boss assured her that he agreed to give her power of attorney to do so.

The witness also testified that Sante instructed her to use her own personal bank account to pay bills, accepting cash deposits from Sante, because the Kimeses were out of town so often that Wetkowski could just as easily sign checks for the Kimes' bills herself.

The arrangement seemed to worked fine for Wetkowski, until Kimes had a portion of the bank-loan funds disbursed directly into her account.

Prosecutors contend that the Kimeses were getting ready to frame Nanette Wetkowski for David Kazdin's murder.

In fact, when Wetkowski's bank account was frozen after Kazdin alerted authorities that the loan applications were fake, Sante made her secretary pay a visit to Kazdin in Los Angeles.

"I didn't know why I had to go see him, I didn't even know him," Wetkowski said. "But I wanted to get my account cleared up."

Wetkowski said she was told that it was just a misunderstanding, that Kazdin agreed to the transaction, but that she needed to deal with Kazdin because the Kimeses had told him they were in the Bahamas.

Sante and Kenneth accompanied their secretary on the trip to L.A., but ordered Wetkowski to travel separately, renting a car and motel room in her own name. When she went to see Kazdin, the Kimeses waited in the car out of eyesight of the home, presumably so they would not be spotted by eyewitnesses.

To Wetkowski's surprise, Kazdin said he didn't know anything about the loan and sent her away.

Prosecutor Eleanor Hunter also presented some 10 pages of tightly scribbled, rambling letters that Sante sent to Wetkowski months after Kazdin's death.

In the documents, Sante urged Wetkowski not to speak to authorities: "Not a Word, Keep Silent"; and "Our notaries are perfectly legal, the only one who could disprove is David Kazdin."

Sante's manservant

Robert McCarren, a homeless man who the Kimes hired to do household chores, also testified Tuesday. The frail, wheelchair-bound witness, dressed in a plaid tie and pastel-checkered suit, described the day Sante and Kenneth invited him into their Las Vegas home.

"She told me I would be part of the family and anything I needed would be taken care of," McCarren told jurors.

What he thought was his lucky day, soon turned out to be a living nightmare.

McCarren said Sante and Kenneth took his wallet and identification, stole his social security checks, and verbally and physically abused him — threatening to kill him if he ever left the house or spoke to anyone about their personal affairs.

In January 1998, Sante allegedly transferred the title of the Vegas property to McCarren, forged a $500,000 homeowner's insurance policy in his name, and then had Kenneth burn the house to the ground.

When the Kimeses moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter, they introduced McCarren to a woman they were subletting an apartment from as their "deaf-mute manservant," to ensure she would not speak to him.

McCarren, who later escaped the Kimeses clutches, also told jurors that days before Kazdin's murder, he overheard Sante talking angrily on the phone, presumably with Kazdin. "She hung up and said to Kenny, 'He knows too much and we got to do something about him.'"

Kenneth Kimes, who is expected to testify on Wednesday, will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in exchange for his guilty plea. Sante faces the same if convicted.