Edmonds may be home soon
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A 47-year-old Indiana man who spent more than a year awaiting trial on murder and attempted murder charges could be on his way home after a hearing this afternoon in Circuit Court.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
The prosecutor's office is expected to submit a request asking that an indictment against Delmar Edmonds on murder and attempted murder charges be dismissed, clearing the way for Edmonds to return to Indianapolis.
Delmar Edmonds was arrested last year and charged with the 1975 murder of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante, but DNA testing may lead to his dismissal.
Edmonds was arrested July 17, 2001, in Indianapolis and charged with the March 14, 1975, murder of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante and attempted murder of Cherie Verdugo-McCoy who were both 13 years old at the time.
The case against Edmonds unraveled on Friday when Honolulu prosecutors got a call from a laboratory in New Orleans saying a DNA sample provided by Edmonds did not match the DNA evidence recovered from the body of Bustamante, who was sexually assaulted before she was shot and killed 27 years ago.
Verdugo-McCoy, who escaped, told police she and Bustamante were walking along a Kailua road when a man stopped his car, ordered the two girls in the car at gunpoint and took them to an area behind the Pali Golf Course.
Edmonds was stationed at Kaneohe Marine Corp Air Station in March 1975 and was considered a suspect but was not arrested or charged in the case and police eventually moved on to other suspects.
The case against Edmonds grew out of a tip to law enforcement officials in 2000 from a former Marine who was stationed in Kane'ohe with Edmonds. The tipster told investigators that Edmonds had asked him to lie about his whereabouts the night Bustamante was killed.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service worked with the Honolulu Police Department to build a case against Edmonds, who was indicted by an O'ahu grand jury on Aug. 7, 2001.
Edmonds' attorney, state Deputy Public Defender Susan Lynn Arnett, yesterday said that Edmonds has always maintained his innocence in the case.
"He told me directly he did not do it," Arnett said. "I'm not the kind of lawyer that walks in and says, 'Did you do it?' It was something he told me very early on in the case and it is something he said in 1975 and again in 2001 and again in 2002."
Arnett said Edmonds provided a DNA sample to investigators after he was arrested in July 2001 and was being held in Indianapolis. She said his DNA and a specimen of DNA that was recovered from Bustamante's body back in 1975 were first sent by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to the Army's Central Identification Lab in Hawaii, which could not determine if the two samples matched.
She said the two samples were then sent to a New York lab, and it, too, could not form an opinion.
Finally, the DNA was sent to the lab in New Orleans and it told prosecutors here on Friday that Edmonds should be excluded from the list of suspects.
Arnett said Edmonds spent the weekend "just relaxing, staying inside and having lots of phone conversations with his family back in Indiana."
