As Francine Gedan sat bound on her bed, watching her captor reload a pistol, she thought she was going to die, her husband said yesterday.

"She didn't know he had just killed three people," said Joseph M. Gedan, a 72-year-old retired U.S. magistrate judge and former assistant U.S. attorney. "This is quite an experience."

Police have arrested Adam Mau-Goffredo in connection with the home-invasion robbery at the Gedans' Tantalus home. Mau-Goffredo is under investigation in the homicides, which occurred at a popular Tantalus lookout.

The couple's harrowing experience began when Francine Gedan answered a knock at the door sometime after 7 p.m. Thursday, her husband said.

A man asked if the "Jacobs" were home, and Francine Gedan told him that he had the wrong house.

The man then pointed a .45-caliber, semi-automatic pistol at her and told her he was going to kill her if she didn't give him the Gedans' green Jaguar, Joseph Gedan said.

He asked where her husband was as he took her into the couple's bedroom. There he bound her hands and feet with masking tape. He then placed her on the bed sitting straight up while he rummaged through the home.

Joseph Gedan came home from work sometime within the hour and walked into his kitchen looking for dinner, but instead found an assailant pointing a gun at his face. He said he saw a taxi van parked in his driveway but thought nothing of it since he and his wife frequently had visitors drop by unannounced.

Gedan said the man ordered him into the bedroom, where Gedan found his wife bound and sitting on their bed.

"He said, 'I'm here to take your car and if you make one fast move or resist, I'm going to kill you,'" Gedan said. "I was stunned."

In the bedroom, the man bound Gedan's hands and feet with tape and sat him next to his wife.

He then took about $80 from Francine Gedan's purse and disabled two phone lines and two cell phones before turning off the lights and leaving the house. He ditched the phones in the couple's pantry and then removed the batteries from several flashlights that he found. But he missed a phone in the couple's bathroom, Gedan said.

The man then asked about the other people living on the property and Joseph Gedan lied, saying they were not home. The assailant then told the Gedans that they would be tied up for a day and a half before he would call 911 and tell police what he did.

"He didn't look nervous to me. He looked very together and he seemed very deliberate," Gedan said.

Although the man did a terrible job taping up the couple, neither wanted to move and risk being shot, he said.

In the driveway, the man ran into the couple's housekeeper, Pattie Dennam, who Gedan said asked the man who he was. He pointed the gun at Dennam and took her into the den, where he bound her hands and feet with tape before fleeing in the Jaguar.

Dennam was able to quickly free herself and used scissors to free the Gedans. When reached by phone yesterday she would not discuss the incident.

Once Joseph Gedan searched his home to make sure the man was gone, he called 911.

Mau-Goffredo was stopped by police and arrested at about 8 p.m. at the bottom of Tantalus Drive.

The Gedans and Dennam were taken in separate cars to the police checkpoint, where officers illuminated Mau-Goffredo's face with flashlights and the trio identified him in the back of a police squad car.

Upon returning to their home, Joseph Gedan said between 15 to 20 officers from the police robbery and homicide details combed his house for evidence.

"This completes the circle for me; I've never been a victim," said the retired judge.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.