Posted on: Wednesday, June 23, 2004
HPD won't join 'cold case' unit
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Hawai'i attorney general's office has received federal money to open a "cold-case unit" to investigate unsolved homicides around the state, but the Honolulu Police Department, which controls case files and evidence for most unsolved murders here, has declined to participate in the program.
Attorney General Mark Bennett said Maui and Kaua'i counties have signed onto the project and "we are currently in discussions with the Big Island."
As for HPD, Bennett said: "I'm confident we will be able to form a cooperative effort in the months ahead."
Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said, "We commend the attorney general's efforts, but we've decided not to participate because we have our own cold-case efforts under way."
An official with HPD's crime laboratory said the lab in recent months has made great strides in DNA analysis, a key element in the solution of old and new criminal cases, submitting 1,772 samples of DNA from Hawai'i felons last month to CODIS, a national DNA database maintained by the FBI.
The CODIS database matched one of those Hawai'i samples to evidence from a "male on male assault case" in a Mainland police jurisdiction, according to Barrie Chua-Chiaco, DNA Serology Unit coordinator in the HPD crime lab. Further details on that case weren't available yesterday.
Bennett said the homicide cold-case unit will be financed by a grant of up to $200,000 from the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance program in the U.S. Justice Department. The state must match up to $66,000 a year.
Among those participating will be personnel from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and from the Army's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which has expertise in the analysis and identification of human remains.
There were 376 unsolved homicide cases in Hawai'i from 1975 through 2002; all but about 90 were committed on O'ahu, according to data compiled by Bennett's office.
Three retired Honolulu Police Department homicide detectives now working as investigators with Bennett's office, Allan Castro, Harold "Hal" Fitchett and Anderson "Bucky" Hee, will participate in the cold-case unit. They will work with homicide detectives and prosecutors to identify specific cases and present newly developed evidence for possible prosecution.
Bennett said his office will have an attorney assigned to the cold-case unit "and I'm confident that a multiple number of prosecutions will be handled by this office."
Bennett said the unit is meant to augment and assist, not duplicate or compete with, county police and prosecutors' offices.
Scientific advances in the analysis of evidence from unsolved homicide cases, particularly DNA analysis of tiny amounts of blood and other bodily fluids, has led to the solving of murder cases, some of them decades-old, on the Mainland.
Much of the success in cold-case investigations depends on the quality of the evidence preserved by police departments and the sophistication and training of crime laboratories analyzing the evidence.
The only crime laboratory in Hawai'i is operated by HPD. Chua-Chiaco of the DNA Serology Unit said the lab is "catching up" on analysis of backlogged evidence from rape and other criminal cases. In addition to the DNA profiles from convicted Hawai'i felons submitted last month to the FBI database, the lab has also submitted 18 DNA forensic evidence samples to the CODIS database for possible matching with DNA profiles from elsewhere in the country. No matches have occurred so far.
A bill authorizing $1.25 million in bond financing to upgrade HPD crime lab equipment and hire new technicians was stalled at the Legislature this year.
Bennett said the new cold-case unit has money budgeted for laboratory analysis. "Costs have dropped dramatically in recent years, and there are a lot of options available out there — the California attorney general's office may help us, we may have access to federal labs, and private labs are competing for the work," he said.
DNA evidence played a central role in HPD's investigation three years ago of a 26-year-old unsolved homicide case. Based on witness testimony and non-DNA evidence in the case, Indiana resident Delmar 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.
But the case against Edmonds unraveled after a New Orleans laboratory said Edmonds' DNA did not match DNA evidence recovered from the body of Bustamante, who was sexually assaulted before she was shot and killed.
Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2447.
