The jury trial of accused murderer Kirk Lankford went on a road trip yesterday, with the jury, lawyers, judge and defendant visiting various North Shore sites where Lankford and his alleged victim spent time the day she disappeared last year.

The field trip ended on a strange note at Kahana Bay, where two women were found digging in the ground with a shovel and pickaxe, explaining that they were trying to find the the body of the woman Lankford is accused of murdering, Masumi Watanabe.

Watanabe, 22, a visitor from Japan, disappeared April 12, 2007, while walking along Pupukea Road on the North Shore of O'ahu. Although Watanabe's remains have never been found, Lankford, 23, is accused of murdering her, based largely on witness statements and forensic evidence recovered from the truck he was driving that day.

John Thoma testified earlier in the trial that he encountered Lankford digging a hole by flashlight near midnight April 12 at Kahana Bay, a remote, crescent-shaped beach on the Windward side of the island.

Lankford drove off after Thoma confronted him, but police later identified him because Thoma noted the license plate number of Lankford's vehicle.

Yesterday afternoon, as jurors in the murder trial waited in three vans parked on Kamehameha Highway, Circuit Judge Karl Sakamoto, Prosecuting Attorney Peter Carlisle, defense lawyer Donald Wilkerson, Lankford and a group of state sheriffs walked down to the shoreline where Thoma said the encounter took place.

There they found two women, Irene Theofanis and Shannon Moultrie, digging in the precise area where Thoma said Lankford had been digging a year earlier.

Theofanis, owner of the Shrimp Shack restaurant in Punalu'u, explained that she and Moultrie were friends of Thoma and they believed that Lankford had buried Watanabe at the site.

They said they had no idea that participants in Lankford's murder trial would be visiting the area that day.

The two were asked to leave and their digging tools were removed before jurors were allowed to walk from the highway to briefly view the area.

LONG DAY ON ROAD

It was the ninth stop in a long day on the road that began at 9 a.m. when jurors climbed into vans in Downtown Honolulu and were driven to the parking lot of the Foodland supermarket at the base of Pupukea Road.

Near the front entrance of the supermarket, Sakamoto convened the trial and announced that parties in the case would be visiting a series of locations that had figured in testimony already delivered in the case.

A caravan of some 14 vehicles, containing jurors, lawyers, the judge and his staff, Lankford and sheriffs guarding him, and several TV and newspaper reporting teams drove up and down Pupukea Road, visiting four sites where Watanabe was known to have been the morning of April 12.

First they stopped at the home of relatives where Watanabe had been staying since February. Watanabe's mother testified earlier that her daughter was very shy and introverted and her visit here was part of a family effort to help her become more outgoing and independent.

Another site visited was a spot on the side of Pupukea Road where relative Yumi Miura said she dropped off Watanabe for her daily 30- to 40-minute walk up the hilly, twisting country road.

Then the jury saw a location where witness Stephen Paty said he saw the young woman talking that morning to the driver of a Hauoli Pest Control truck.

Lankford worked for the company and acknowledged driving his work vehicle in the area that morning but denied seeing or speaking to Watanabe.

Police recovered a tire track matching Lankford's truck at the location where Paty said he saw Watanabe.

In the afternoon, the jury visited seven locations where Lankford's truck stopped the morning of April 12. The sites were identified through use of a Global Positioning System device installed on Lankford's truck that used satellite signals to track and record the vehicle's movements.

DEFENSE OBJECTS

At each of those locations, defense lawyer Donald Wilkerson vigorously objected to use of the GPS data, saying the way prosecutors and police plotted the precise locations of where the truck stopped that day was "inaccurate and misleading to the jury."

Sakamoto overruled the objections and the site visits continued.

Only two of Lankford's stops that morning were for Hauoli appointments. Others included a roadside location near, but not identical to, the spot where Paty said he saw Watanabe and the truck.

Another was at a vacant lot on Makana Road, a residential street off Pupukea Road. And another was on Ke Waena Road on the beach near Kamehameha Highway, where Lankford had a Hauoli service customer.

But he had no appointment scheduled at the unoccupied house that morning. In fact, he had been to the house on a regularly scheduled service visit two days earlier.

A part-time caretaker at the house testified during the trial that someone had broken into the home, damaging an entry door and also breaking the lock on an interior door that led to a bathroom and storage area.

Nothing was taken during the break-in, the caretaker testified.

Defense lawyer Wilkerson said he may schedule a site visit of his own, which would be conducted after the prosecution rests its case Wednesday.

Wilkerson told the judge last week that one site he might ask jurors to visit would be an area along Kamehameha Highway with "a view of Chinaman's Hat," the small island off Kualoa Beach Park on the Windward coast.

Wilkerson did not explain why the jury should be taken there.

The defense has not presented its case, but Wilkerson has indicated in questions to two witnesses that Lankford may have "accidentally hit" Watanabe with his truck while driving too close to the shoulder of Pupukea Road.

The trial resumes Monday morning in Circuit Court.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.