Ex-officer testifies murder suspect's alibi never verified
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A Kane'ohe Marine suspected of killing a 13-year-old Kailua girl in 1975 told police he was at a party when the slaying took place, but officers never verified his story, according to court testimony yesterday.
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Police officer William Ornellas, who headed the 1975 homicide investigation into the death of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante, said Delmar Edmonds told investigators he was at a party the night Bustamante was killed and gave police a list of names of others at the party who could verify his alibi.
Delmar Edmonds is charged with murder in the 1975 death of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante.
Ornellas said he gave Edmonds a business card and asked him to have others who were at the party call police so they could confirm Edmonds' story.
Ornellas said he and other police officers had trouble finding one of the alibi witnesses, whom Edmonds felt confident would confirm his alibi, because the man who was a fellow Marine who had been sent to Vietnam.
None of the alibi witnesses called him and he did not go to Marine Corps officials for help in scheduling interviews with others on the list, said Ornellas, who retired from the Honolulu Police Department in 1988.
Edmonds met with him voluntarily at least twice in March 1975, Ornellas said, but the case against him went cold after a second girl, also 13, who was with Bustamante but managed to escape and call police, picked Edmonds out of a lineup but said she was only "60 to 70 percent certain" that Edmonds was their abductor.
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Because of the surviving girl's uncertainty and because there were no new leads to pursue, the Bustamante case was left open but put aside while homicide investigators worked on other murders, Ornellas said.
Dawn "Dede" Bustamante was abducted and died after she was shot in the head while trying to escape.
Edmonds, now 47, was indicted by an O'ahu grand jury in July 2001 on charges of murdering Bustamante and attempting to murder the other girl. He has pleaded innocent to the charges.
The indictment came after Bruce Warshawsky, a "cold case" specialist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service office in Honolulu, reopened the case in early 2000. Warshawsky obtained a list of Marines who were stationed with Edmonds in Kane'ohe, and he and other NCIS agents, as well as Honolulu police detectives, began interviewing them.
Statements the Marines made to investigators resulted in Edmonds' indictment.
In a pre-trial hearing this week before Circuit Judge Marie Milks, Edmonds' lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Susan Arnett, is asking that charges against Edmonds be dismissed because of the lengthy delay in bringing the case to prosecution.
In addition, Arnett is arguing that the NCIS had no legal basis to work with the Honolulu Police Department in building a case against Edmonds because NCIS agents knew Edmonds was discharged from the Marines in 1975 and is no longer subject to military law.
City Deputy Prosecutor Rom Trader, however, maintains that NCIS participation in building the case against Edmonds was allowed under federal regulations.
The hearing resumes today.
