Sad and tragic tale of sisters ; Girls saw mother strangled by father

11 May 1973 TWO little girls, whose life was described by alawyer as the "saddest and most tragic tale it has ever been mymisfortune to recount", received Pounds 7,000 in the High Court thisweek.

They were Jane and Ruth Ward, who lived with their aunt and unclein Orchard Avenue, Brentwood.

Since 1967, when Jane was five years old and her sister was onlytwo, their young lives had been a catalogue of horror.

For in that year, their father, Ernest Ward, then a porter atHigh Wood hospital, was crippled when his motorcycle was incollision with a lorry owned by Mac Fisheries Ltd.

While he was in hospital, Jane's twin brother, Philip, died bysuffocating in his …

MORTGAGE: Slow Down and Smell the Accountability; Back to basics loan processing means thorough income, employment and ID verification are now a part of almost all loan approvals. Web-based data aggregation tools can help out, but slower closings are inevitable.(Business Innovation)

Byline: John Adams

There's no better sign of how the mortgage market's atmosphere has changed than what potential borrowers are hearing from Ameritrust. "We let them know up front that we are trying to close loans less quickly so all information on the application can be validated," says John Owens, CEO of Ameritrust in Charlotte, where the lender's closings take about two weeks longer than a couple of years ago - even with the deployment of new data management technology that processes more consumer application information in less time. "We are making sure that all information gets verified before closing. We are trying to make it difficult for anyone who's trying to commit fraud."

Mortgage fraud was …