Trial for '99 Waialua murder wraps up
Advertiser Staff
The trial of a man accused of murdering a vacuum cleaner salesman in Waialua two years ago drew to a close in Circuit Court yesterday with the prosecution claiming Michael Robert Lawrence's actions in the hours following the slaying poke holes in the assertion that he was legally insane at the time.
But the defense argued that while not all of the defense psychiatrists or psychologists who examined Lawrence agree on what particular mental illness Lawrence was suffering from at the time he killed Melchor Tabag, the four of them agreed that the illness was real and substantial.
City Deputy Prosecutor Kevin Takata told Circuit Judge Virginia Crandall, who is presiding over the jury-waived trial, that evidence shows Lawrence, 25, was in complete control of his actions when he killed Tabag on March 27, 1999. Tabag had gone to Lawrence's home in hopes of selling a vacuum cleaner.
Takata said Lawrence hit Tabag with the hammer from behind in order to maintain the element of surprise, got a knife from inside his bedroom because he was concerned that the hammer blows had not killed Tabag, and later retrieved a bone saw hanging from a beam above the patio area to dismember the body.
Lawrence then reversed Tabag's car into the driveway to load the body into the trunk and keep it out of the sight of passers-by and drove to a deserted area to dismember the body so that no one would see him, Takata said.
Lawrence deposited the body parts in an empty dog- food bag and Tabag's clothing in a second bag to separate the evidence, and then deposited the bags at a city dump in Hale'iwa in hopes of hiding the evidence, the deputy prosecutor said, all proof that Lawrence was making conscious efforts to hide the crime because he knew he had done something wrong.
He said Lawrence ordered his mother to clean up a pool of blood and told her that Tabag had tripped, fallen and struck his head.
"More than any other evidence, that blows away the insanity defense — that he came up with an excuse that's not true," Takata said.
But Deputy Public Defender William Jameson said the four medical experts called by the defense may have used different names for the mental illness that affected Lawrence at the time he killed Tabag, but all agreed that he suffered from illusions and/or hallucinations, likely from years of drug and alcohol abuse.
"Whatever name you want to give it, he had a fixed delusion, a powerful delusion, that his purpose on earth was to kill people and chop them up," Jameson said.
He said Lawrence would spend hours in his room staring at a blank computer monitor and once moved the monitor to the roof of the family garage. While in prison awaiting trial, Lawrence would communicate only in writing, smear himself with and ingest feces, and hide his urine, Jameson said.
Lawrence looked at the floor throughout yesterday's session.
Tabag's body was never recovered. Takata said outside the courtroom that Lawrence did not tell doctors at the Hawai'i State Hospital about killing and dismembering Tabag for more than a year after the incident. The remains were dumped at a city waste transfer station in Hale'iwa and were taken to the city's H-power plant in Kapolei. Ash from that plant is then buried at the nearby Waimanalo Gulch landfill, Takata said.
Crandall is expected to issue a verdict shortly.
