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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, August 6, 2002

Judge asked to drop murder charges

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

The lawyer for a former Kane'ohe Marine accused of abducting two Kailua girls in March 1975 and killing one of them told a Circuit Court judge yesterday that murder charges against her client should be dropped because of the long delay in charging him.

Delmar Edmonds is charged with murder in the 1975 death of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante.

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Susan Arnett, a state deputy public defender, also is arguing that the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, which reopened a homicide investigation in early 2000 against murder suspect Delmar Edmonds, should never have revisited the 25-year-old case because NCIS agents knew Edmonds could not be tried in a military court since he was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1975.

Edmonds, 47, is charged with murder in the death of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante. Edmonds was a Marine stationed at the Marine Corps base in Kane'ohe when Bustamante was abducted and killed. She was shot in the head while attempting to flee from a man who had kidnapped her and another girl, also 13. The other girl escaped and called police.

Two NCIS agents who testified at the hearing before Circuit Judge Marie Milks yesterday said they believe the agency's involvement in reopening the case was proper.

The agents said the NCIS is exempted from a federal law that prohibits law enforcement units in other branches of the service from conducting criminal investigations that result in charges against suspects who will be tried in state courts.

Dawn "Dede" Bustamante was abducted and died after she was shot in the head while trying to escape.

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Also testifying at yesterday's hearing was Jeff Yamashita, a former Honolulu police detective.

Yamashita said Edmonds was considered a suspect within days of Bustamante's slaying, but that he and other detectives pursued other leads after the girl who survived told police after a line-up that she was only "70 percent certain" that Edmonds was the one who abducted her and Bustamante.

NCIS agent Bruce Warshawsky, who is charged with reviewing so-called "cold crimes," or those that have gone unsolved for several years, said he decided to look into the Bustamante case at the request of Chris Yohn, another agent who married into the Bustamante family.

Even though Edmonds had long been discharged from the Marine Corps, Warshawsky said he believed the NCIS "had a legal and moral obligation to investigate the case" because Edmonds had been a Marine stationed in Hawai'i at the time of his alleged involvement in Bustamante's slaying.

Paul Ciccarelli, special agent in charge of the Pearl Harbor NCIS field office, said the agency is made up of civilians and that it ultimately reports to the secretary of the Navy, also a civilian.

The setup prevents military officials from having any say in crimes the NCIS investigates, Ciccarelli said.

The hearing continues Wednesday.