DNA clears former Marine Edmonds of 1975 murder

By David Waite and Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writers

Delmar Edmonds, a former Kane'ohe Marine accused of killing a 13-year-old girl more than 27 years ago, was released from custody yesterday after Honolulu prosecutors learned that DNA samples taken from the dead girl did not match those of Edmonds.

Delmar Edmonds and his attorney Susan Lynn Arnett shared a light moment after his release from O'ahu Community Correctional Center yesterday. Edmonds was suspected of murdering a 13-year-old girl in 1975. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

The gap between the 1975 slaying of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante and last year's O'ahu grand jury murder indictment against Edmonds was considered one of the longest, if not the longest, for a murder case here. And yesterday, city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said he could not recall a case in Honolulu that advanced as far as the one against Edmonds only to have the case crumble as a result of DNA testing.

"I'm not bitter at all against this state or Hawai'i in general," Edmonds said from at his lawyer's office, less than an hour after being released from the O'ahu Community Correctional Center. "All I want to do is get back home to Indiana as soon as possible and be with my family. That is all I care about."

Edmonds, 47, was indicted by the O'ahu grand jury Aug. 7, 2001, on a charge of murdering Bustamante when he was stationed at the Marine Corps base in Kane'ohe. Bustamante and another 13-year-old girl, Cherie Verdugo-McCoy, were walking along a Kailua street March 14, 1975, when a man forced the pair into his car at gunpoint and took them to an isolated area behind the Pali golf course.

Bustamante was sexually assaulted and fatally shot. Verdugo-McCoy escaped and called police.

Edmonds, who steadfastly maintained he was innocent, was extradited from Indianapolis to Honolulu on Oct. 18. He had been held at OCCC ever since, unable to post $500,000 bail.

Carlisle yesterday said Edmonds' lawyer, state Deputy Public Defender Susan Lynn Arnett, was notified early yesterday morning, immediately after his office learned from a lab in Louisiana that DNA sperm samples taken from Bustamante did not match those provided by Edmonds. At an afternoon meeting with Circuit Judge Marie Milks, it was agreed that Edmonds would be released on his own recognizance, Carlisle said.

He said his office has filed a motion to dismiss a murder indictment against Edmonds "without prejudice," meaning Edmonds theoretically could be reindicted if new evidence is discovered.

But Arnett said she will ask that the indictment against Edmonds be permanently dismissed, meaning the prosecutors would not be able to indict him in the future.

"If the judge dismisses the case without prejudice, I hope that prosecutors will be given a very limited time period to come up with something else," Arnett said.

Delmar Edmonds, a former Kane'ohe Marine charged with murdering a 13-year-old girl in 1975, was released yesterday from OCCC. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Carlisle could not immediately say if his office will pay for Edmonds' airplane ticket home.

A break in the then 26-year-old case came last year when a former Marine stationed with Edmonds in Hawai'i contacted authorities to say Edmonds had asked him and other Marines to lie about his whereabouts the night that Bustamante was killed, according to court documents.

Arnett said she had a hunch that the Louisiana company's DNA testing wouldn't implicate her client.

"I knew (the samples) wouldn't match, so I just wondered what would be the prosecutors' next step," she said.

Arnett believed police never saw her client as a serious suspect.

"The girl who escaped the attack picked (Edmonds) out of a lineup and said she was only 60 to 70 percent certain that he resembled my client," Arnett said.

Arnett said she could not accept the fact that fellow Marines who believed Edmonds committed the murder, would harbor that secret for more than 25 years before bringing it up.

"Soldiers of honor would not have allowed someone who committed an act like that to leave the military," Arnett said. "I would have been delighted to question some of these other soldiers on the stand. None of the case against Mr. Edmonds made a whole lot of sense."

Carlisle yesterday said at least two attempts were made to analyze the DNA evidence before Edmonds was indicted. He termed those efforts "unsuccessful."

City Deputy Prosecutor Rom Trader said a South Carolina lab, which first attempted to do the DNA analysis but could not, recommended the Louisiana lab that specializes in working with "minute quantities" of the substance and those results were received yesterday.

"They determined the DNA (submitted by the prosecutor's office) was excluded from being that of Delmar Edmonds," Trader said.

He said he pursued the DNA testing "to make sure there were no loose ends" in the case against Edmonds.

Bustamante's father, Neil, had a muted response to Edmonds' release.

"I don't know the circumstances, but obviously they're based on good reasons," said Bustamante, who lives in Kamuela on the Big Island. "Courts of law do things for good reason. Whether you agree with them or not they're still the law."

Bringing the case to trial, he said, "didn't really bother me one way or another. It wouldn't change things in my life. My life changed many years ago, and I've adjusted to the changes."

Bustamante also was not bothered that no one from the prosecutor's office called him before Edmonds was released.

"That's our justice system," he said. "It isn't as always you would like it to be."

Edmonds' wife, Jannifer, said the family in Indianapolis won't celebrate until her husband is in Indiana.

For now, she said, "I'm happy. We're just thankful to God that it's finally over. We knew it was just a matter of time before the truth came out and they released him. It's been a long time coming, and we're just grateful that it's finally over."

Advertiser staff writer Dan Nakaso contributed to this report.