Taxi driver guilty in '99 slaying
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A Circuit Court jury deliberated for about 90 minutes yesterday before finding cab driver Keith Murauskas guilty of kidnapping and murdering fellow cab driver Paul Salazar in April 1999.
Murauskas, 45, faces a mandatory term of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced April 10, the stiffest possible sentence under Hawai'i law.
Murauskas was convicted for bludgeoning Salazar, 33, to death with a sledgehammer at Salazar's Magellan Avenue apartment and planning to kill Salazar's wife, Virginia, so there would be no witnesses. Virginia Salazar escaped injury when she failed to return home at her usual hour on the afternoon her husband was killed.
Because he was found guilty of the murder of Salazar and of planning to kill Salazar's wife, Murauskas was convicted of attempted first-degree murder, a charge that involves trying to kill more than one person. Attempted first-degree murder carries a harsher sentence than does the murder of a single person.
During the trial, city Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Van Marter said that Murauskas teamed up with a third cab driver, Edward Wallace Martin, 30, to rob and kill Salazar but their hopes of getting away with it fell apart when Martin, overcome with remorse, called police immediately after Murauskas left Salazar's apartment.
During the trial, Murauskas' lawyer, Keith Shigetomi, argued that Martin killed Salazar and then implicated Murauskas after realizing there was no way he could get away with the crime.
After the verdict was announced yesterday, Van Marter described Salazar's death as a "heinous, atrocious, brutal murder — just a senseless, brutal crime."
He said Murauskas was sentenced in 1983 to three life terms in prison for multiple bank robberies, served 14 years, and was on parole at the time Salazar was murdered.
"He's a complete sociopath who has been involved in serious felonies ever since he was a young teenager," Van Marter said.
The conviction on the first-degree attempted murder charge means that Murauskas will never be eligible for parole and will only be released from prison if the governor commutes his sentence.
