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The Honolulu Advertiser
Updated at 3:33 p.m., Monday, March 31, 2008

Court visits spot where Lankford says he dumped body

Advertiser Staff

Fifty weeks after Masumi Watanabe disappeared, the man charged with killing her today visited the place where he claims she died accidentally as well as a Windward O'ahu shoreline where he says he discarded Watanabe's body.

It was the second "site visit" in the murder trial of Kirk Lankford, allowing jurors first-hand looks at various locations the prosecution or defense consider significant to the case.

It was the defense's turn today, and the jury was taken to 59-415 Makana Road, in the Pupukea Heights area of the North Shore, where defense attorney Donald Wilkerson pointed out two large rocks on the mauka side of the road. That's where Lankford is expected to testify later this week that Watanabe, a 21-year-old visitor from Japan, died on the morning of April 12.

Wilkerson earlier told the jury that the young woman jumped out of Lankford's truck, struck her head on a roadside boulder, and died.

The jury was also taken to a spot on Kamehameha Highway near Kualoa Beach Park where Lankford said he carried Watanabe's body a few hundred yards offshore and discarded it.

The trial resumes again this afternoon in court, then recesses for a day before the defense is expected to wrap up its case Wednesday and Thursday with testimony from final witnesses, including Lankford himself.