Tag: Crime

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Sailor’s deal angers relative of slain women

Thursday, May 8, 2003

Sailor’s deal angers relative of slain women

The brother/son of the victims is upset that their killer avoids the death penalty

By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

A Singapore man whose sister and mother were killed last summer by a Pearl Harbor sailor is outraged by a plea agreement that limits the admitted killer’s jail time to 30 years.

Kasti Ahmad told the Star-Bulletin by e-mail yesterday that his family was never consulted about the agreement Navy prosecutors made with Petty Officer 2nd Class David DeArmond.

The agreement allowed DeArmond to escape a possible death sentence for killing his wife, Zaleha DeArmond, and his mother-in-law, Saniah Binte Abdul Ghani.

“I am outraged at the plea agreement and the extremely short time that the deal was made without even informing me,” said Ahmad. “Getting a conviction without the usual sentence is a total sellout. I think this is a deal of convenience to shorten the process and to protect other negligent circumstances that led to the death.”

Ahmad added that such a deal would have never happened in Singapore, where his sister, Zaleha DeArmond, and their mother, Abdul Ghani, are from and which is known for its strict judicial system.

DeArmond, 33, a 14-year Navy veteran, agreed to plead guilty to the murder of his mother-in-law and the voluntary manslaughter of his wife.

The plea agreement was accepted Monday by Navy Capt. Michael Hinkley, the military judge presiding over DeArmond’s court-martial. The murder conviction has a maximum sentence of life, while a maximum sentence for manslaughter is 15 years.

However, Lt. Cmdr. James Lucci, the Navy’s lead prosecutor, told Ahmad in an e-mail dated Saturday that the plea agreement limits the maximum prison time to 30 years.

Lucci said in the e-mail: “This agreement is very advantageous for us, the government as well as the defense. We are now guaranteed a conviction for murder, which removes the uncertainty and chance associated with any contested trial.”

It also meant that DeArmond would not face the death penalty, which is not allowed under state law but is permissible in the military.

However, Lucci acknowledged that DeArmond could spend less time in jail because he still has to be sentenced by a jury of at least five sailors and officers.

That will take place during the first week in June.

“Although HT2 (hull technician 2nd class) DeArmond has signed an agreement to limit his sentence to 30 years,” Lucci said, “the military court may sentence him to a shorter or longer sentence.”

However, under the plea agreement, the military judge would have to set aside any prison time longer than 30 years.

Lucci recommended that Ahmad and his family attend the June session to say how “the loss has affected them.” Ahmad said he plans to attend. He also said custody of his sister’s three children should be granted to his family. The children are in a foster home.

Zaleha DeArmond and her mother were killed on the second floor of her townhouse in the early morning hours of June 10 during a domestic argument.

Forensic evidence presented during pretrial hearings disclosed David DeArmond hit his wife about four or five times with an iron skillet.

His mother-in-law tried to stop the argument by attacking DeArmond with a steak knife, which he took away from her and used to stab her 10 times.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/05/08/news/story6.html

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Sailor admits to killing wife, having sex with his wife’s dead body

Sailor admits to killing wife, mother-in-law

By B.J. Reyes
ASSOCIATED PRESS

8:03 p.m., May 5, 2003

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii – A sailor on Monday tearfully admitted to fatally beating his wife with an iron skillet and stabbing his mother-in-law to death at the couple’s home last year.

Petty Officer 2nd Class David A. DeArmond, 32, pleaded guilty to charges of murder, voluntary manslaughter and abuse of a corpse in exchange for prosecutors dropping charges of premeditated murder, which could have resulted in the death penalty.

DeArmond admitted having sex with his wife’s dead body.

Prosecutors dropped charges of attempted rape and obstruction.

“I just want to say I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” DeArmond said. “I accept responsibility.”

The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A military jury will decide DeArmond’s sentence. That phase of his general court martial is scheduled to begin in early June.

Attorneys declined comment after Monday’s hearing.

DeArmond’s Singapore-born wife, Zaleha, 31, and her mother, Saniah Binte Abdul Ghani, 66, were found dead June 10 in the couple’s home in a Navy housing complex at Pearl Harbor.

Witnesses testified at a pretrial hearing that the relationship between DeArmond and his wife was strained.

At Monday’s hearing, DeArmond testified that he hit his wife with a skillet during a confrontation in the pre-dawn hours of June 10.

He then testified that his mother-in-law tried to intervene and swung at him with a steak knife, which he disarmed her of and used to stab her.

Though Hawaii doesn’t have the death penalty, murder can be a capital offense under military law depending on the recommendation of the presiding judge.

Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20030505-2003-navy-doubleslaying.html

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Soldier turns himself in in Waikiki stabbing

Soldier turns himself in in Waikiki stabbing

A second suspect in a stabbing Saturday turned himself in to police Monday. He was arrested, then released without charges pending investigation.

The suspect, a 36-year-old Schofield Barracks soldier, turned himself in at the Wahiawa Police Station.

Police said the victim, a 29-year-old man, was stabbed in the neck during an argument between four males on Seaside Avenue near the Waikiki Trade Center. The victim was taken to Queen’s Medical Center in critical condition, but improved and has been released.

Police arrested a 30-year-old man at the scene, but released him without charges.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/01/29/news/briefs.html

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ABYSS members convicted of sex assault, sentenced to 10 years

According to sources at the Honolulu Police Department, ABYSS is a hip hop group / gang affiliated with the military.

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Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Musicians get 10-year terms for sex assault

Two members of rap music group Abyss that authorities say is involved in prostitution and drug trafficking were convicted yesterday of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in October 1998.

This was a retrial for Marlo Crawley, 31, and Habib Shabazz, 25, accused of participating in what prosecutors characterized as a “gang rape” at a Waikiki hotel room.

Following a jury-waived trial that began Jan. 13, Circuit Judge Sandra Simms found Crawley guilty of second-degree sexual assault and attempted second-degree sexual assault, and immediately sentenced him to 10-year terms to be served at the same time. At the time of his arrest, he was on probation for a firearms offense.

Shabazz was also convicted of second-degree sexual assault and received a 10-year term to be served at the same time as a 10-year term he is already serving for a burglary conviction on the Big Island.

Simms said Crawley was not credible and that his and Shabazz’s version of events were “preposterous.” The defendants had argued that the sex was consensual.

The girl had testified she met the defendants and accompanied them to the hotel room, where they sexually assaulted her with five friends cheering on and passing out condoms.

The two were previously tried and convicted of similar charges in March 2001, but they successfully appealed the conviction on the basis that the prosecutor had prejudiced them by referring to the woman as a “local” girl.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/01/29/news/briefs.html

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Sailor faces execution

Thursday, January 9, 2003

Pearl sailor faces execution

The Navy petty officer is accused of killing his Singapore-born wife and mother-in-law

By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

Navy prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a Pearl Harbor sailor who they say killed his Singapore-born wife and her mother.

Rear Adm. Robert Conway, commander of Navy Region Hawaii, decided yesterday that Navy Petty Officer David DeArmond will be court-martialed for allegedly killing his second wife, Zaleha DeArmond, 31, and her mother, Saniah Binte Abdul Ghani, 66, on June 10.

DeArmond, 31, is accused of killing his wife by hitting her on the head with a skillet during an argument in the couple’s two-story home while their three children slept a few feet away. In the second premeditated-murder charge, DeArmond is accused of repeatedly stabbing his mother-in-law with a knife.

DeArmond also is charged with attempting to rape his wife, abusing her body and destroying, tampering and moving evidence from the couple’s townhouse on Leal Place outside Pearl Harbor’s Nimitz Gate.

If prosecutors are successful in seeking the death penalty, DeArmond would be the first Hawaii service member to be executed since statehood.

The Navy said a service member convicted of a capital crime would be executed with a lethal injection administered at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Dwight Sullivan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland who specializes in military capital crime cases, said that since 1950 “there have been no executions from court martials held in Hawaii.”

Sullivan said military capital crime cases have been “very rare” since 1997, when the option of life without parole became a possibility.

“Capital crime cases are very expensive,” Sullivan said, “and very difficult to try.”

DeArmond’s court-martial could come within 90 days. Under military regulations, the case must be tried before a panel of at least five military members.

Earle Partington, a local lawyer who specializes in military cases, said the military generally evokes the death penalty in “very heinous cases.

“The classic cases generally involve multiple homicides,” Partington said, “with a rape involved in the crime.”

Partington said he cannot recall any military member being charged with a capital crime since he moved here in 1975.

There are now six men — three Marines and three soldiers — awaiting execution at Leavenworth’s U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. All six on the military’s death row were convicted of premeditated murder or felony murder.

The National Law Journal reports that 35 people have been executed by the Army since 1916. The last military execution was held April 13, 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder.

In 1983, the Armed Forces Court of Appeals held in U.S. v. Matthews that military capital sentencing procedures were unconstitutional for failing to require a finding of individualized aggravating circumstances.

In 1984, the death penalty was reinstated when President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order adopting detailed rules for capital courts-martial. Among the rules was a list of 11 aggravating factors that qualify defendants for death sentences.

Only the president has the power to commute a death sentence, and no service member can be executed unless the president personally confirms the death penalty.

Capital punishment was abolished in Hawaii in 1957. However, debate over the issue was renewed recently when a state senator said he would propose that the death penalty be reinstated when a child is murdered.

During a pretrial hearing held in November, witnesses testified that DeArmond believed that his Singapore-born wife was seeing sailors whom she met at a Pearl Harbor “single sailors’ bar,” where she worked as a waitress.

Jeanette William-Wallace, DeArmond’s first wife, testified that DeArmond was afraid to divorce his second wife because he was fearful that she would leave him and flee to Singapore, taking with her the couple’s children, Danny, 5, Courtney, 3, and Brandon, 2. The children are now living with foster parents.

DeArmond, 33, is a hull technician assigned to the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

His wife’s family members in Singapore have said they thought that she wanted to leave her husband because he was abusive.

She met DeArmond in San Diego while on a trip, and the two were married in 1996. Saniah was killed a day before she was supposed to return to Singapore.

Zaleha DeArmond’s 90-year-old father also had been living with the couple until he returned to Singapore in January.

Zaleha DeArmond had sought a restraining order May 3, saying her husband trashed the dining table until it broke, threw away the Quran, tossed their wedding photo in the toilet and threatened her.

DeArmond’s current enlistment was supposed to expire on Dec. 7 but has been placed on hold pending the outcome of the double homicide charges. He has been in the Navy for 13 years.
Schofield held execution in 1947

Star-Bulletin staff

One of the last reported military executions here occurred in 1947 at Schofield Barracks.

On April 22, 1947, Army Pvt. Garlon Mickles, 19, was hanged for beating and raping a female War Department employee on Guam a year earlier. “Death came 20 minutes after the trap door was sprung,” the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, noting the soldier mounted the Schofield Barracks gallows at 6:45 a.m. at a place called execution gulch.

The newspaper reported the Missouri man seemed to have accepted his fate: His final hours were spent in “gay spirits,” the provost marshal said. At 5:30 a.m., Mickles sat in the Schofield Barracks stockade eating sweet rolls and drinking coffee.

On the gallows, when he thought the noose was properly placed around his neck, Mickles made a last request to the guards: that his mother be informed he “died like a man.”

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/01/09/news/story1.html

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Okinawans protest crimes by US troops

Published on Thursday, July 13, 2000 in the Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany)

Okinawans Outraged Over Crimes By Troops Of ‘Rogue Superpower America’

by Karl Grobe

Bowing to Japanese concerns about a string of incidents involving American troops stationed on Okinawa, United States military authorities on the Japanese island have this week imposed an indefinite curfew and alcohol ban on members of all its armed forces stationed there.

The ban comes less than a week before the three-day G-7 summit meeting on the island, scheduled to start on July 12, and less than two weeks ahead of US President Bill Clinton’s visit to the island for the G-8 international summit on July 21-23. He will be the first US leader to go to Okinawa since the island, captured during World War II, was returned to Japan in 1972.

The recent incidents have encouraged opponents of the American bases on Okinawa, who had been concerned that a July 20 protest rally would not draw enough people to circle Kadena Air Base. Until recently, Okinawan officials were taking great pains to separate the summit from the base issue.

Last week, a 19-year-old US Marine was arrested on charges of indecency and unlawful entry after he allegedly walked into an unlocked apartment in Okinawa City at night, crawled into the bed of a 14-year-old girl and fondled her. The unidentified Marine, who was apparently drunk, was arrested after the girl’s mother discovered her daughter screaming and called police. The Marine later said he wanted to visit a friend and entered the wrong house by mistake.

The incident triggered a wave of protest that’s hardly likely to subside before the G-7 and G-8 meetings get underway. Afterwards, Japan was treated to the sight of Lieutenant-General Earl Hailston of the United States Marine Corps, the highest-ranking American officer on Okinawa, bowing deeply to the prefecture’s governor in a striking display of contrition.

Early Sunday morning, a US Air Force staff sergeant was involved in a hit-and-run accident at the United States Air Force’s Kadena Air Base that left an Okinawan pedestrian injured. The sergeant was later caught. The authorities investigating the accident said it appeared that alcohol was involved.

The US Ambassador to Japan, Thomas Foley, visited Foreign Minister Yohei Kono in Tokyo on Monday to offer his regrets for the behaviour of US service members on Okinawa. “I have come to express to you my profound regret for the events in Okinawa, and to tell you that steps have been taken so this won’t happen again,” Foley said, according to Japanese news reports.

After the first incident, the provincial parliament in Naha, Okinawa’s capital, promptly issued a unanimous protest against “the frequent crimes of the US soldiers” which “strongly disturb and shock the people of the prefecture of Okinawa.” At a Saturday protest outside the Marine Corps headquarters, members of a women’s civic group recalled an incident five years ago in which three US servicemen were convicted of abducting a 12-year-old girl from a supermarket and repeatedly raping her. The three were tried by a Japanese court. Two of them were sentenced to seven years in prison, the third to six and a half years.

The behaviour of US service members stationed on Okinawa remains unchanged since that incident, claimed the group’s leader, Naha city assemblywoman Suzuyo Takazato as cited in the Japan Times, adding, “The best and only way to solve such a problem is to make the islands free of military bases.” “Okinawa is sitting atop a pool of molten lava,” Governor Keiichi Inamine told the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper, “and it can explode at any minute.” “I have never before heard the word bakuhatsu (explosion) as often as I did during visit ,” said Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, in an eight-part series for Asahi Shimbun. If the authorities take a hard-line stance, he said, simmering public outrage could boil over in a number of different forms – in a worst-case scenario, perhaps even in the form of bloody clashes between US troops and members of the Japanese Self-Defence Force.

About 26,000 of the 48,000 American military personnel in Japan are stationed in Okinawa or elsewhere in the Ryukyu Islands, along with about an equal number of American civilian employees – well over 50,000 all told. The 39 military bases there, which occupy more than 10 per cent of the island’s area, have been bones of contention since the 1960 signing of a new Japanese security treaty in Washington.

Minutes and notes also signed at the same time excluded Ryukyu and Bonin Islands from the area the new treaty covered. That agreement has been continuously extended even after the United States returned the rest of the islands to Japan in 1972.

In 1996, US President Clinton promised to return the American base at Futenma to Japan, but current plans just call for relocating the American facility to Nago, where a new airbase is also planned.

Okinawa’s protest movement had an effect on Japan’s parliamentary elections in June. Mitsuku Tomon, 57-year-old former deputy governor of Okinawa and an outspoken opponent of the American bases, won one of the island’s three seats in parliament. The recent reduction of tension in Korea, a subject due for discussion at the G-7 summit, eliminates the need for stationing US Marines and Air Force planes on Okinawa, according to the local peace movement. A columnist writing in the Los Angeles Times recently said that North Korea is not as big a problem now as the “rogue superpower America.”

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Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/071300-01.htm

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Wahiawa tries to eliminate prostitution

Monday, July 10, 2000

Wahiawa tries to eliminate prostitution

A bill being considered would make it a prostitution-free zone

By Pat Gee
Star-Bulletin

Police Sgt. Fay Tamura thinks streetwalkers will find it harder to do business in Wahiawa if the City Council passes a prostitution-free zone bill.

But two Wahiawa pastors aren’t convinced, saying it would just force prostitutes to take their trade elsewhere.

If the bill passes, enforcement could be stepped up and prostitutes would face harsher penalties in the so-called prostitution-free zones. The bill would designate Wahiawa, the Ala Moana area and downtown Honolulu as such zones. Waikiki was designated a prostitution-free zone last year.

Tamura, who has been in charge of the prostitution unit in Wahiawa for two years, said adding the “geographical restriction” would allow a judge to put prostitutes in jail without bail for up to 30 days, as well as ban their return to the district for six months.

The Wahiawa Neighborhood Board launched a campaign two years ago to rid the town of streetwalkers, especially in residential areas, according to Chairman Ben Acohido.

“A family was driven from the neighborhood” because of the prostitution, he said.

Community members took to walking alongside prostitutes to discourage solicitation.

Although the problem eased temporarily, the activity “is still prevalent,” said police Maj. William Gulledge.

The two officers said many of the streetwalkers are transvestites.

If a prostitution free-zone “is what the community wants, we’ll support it,” said Lt. Rich Pease, pastor of the Salvation Army church on California Avenue. “But it’s not the answer to the problem. They’ll just relocate. We have to provide them some sort of program to change their lifestyle.”

The Rev. Michael Henderson of the New Life Body of Christ on Kamehameha Highway agreed. “We think what they’re trying to do is commendable, but we need to come up with alternatives. It’s no solution to the problem to just try to make them go away,” Henderson said.

“A lot of them don’t want to be in” (the business, but) “have to survive and have no place to go. We hope to have a house for them, a transition building, a safe environment, so they don’t have to go back to a drug-infested home or bad environment.”

Henderson also disputed the perception that the military is the main source of clientele. About half are local people, he said, adding he’s seen them in the early morning or late at night when he’s at the church youth center on California and Walker avenues.

At community meetings, he said he’s asked if anyone would offer a job to a prostitute as an alternative, but “there were no takers.”

Mary Patterson, who manages the Mango Marketplace, bordered by California Avenue and Mango Place and Street, doesn’t think prostitutes create a major problem for the complex. But “customers don’t like it” when they enter the stores, and she thinks business would improve if they were banned.

Patterson says she has to clean up a lot of rubbish every morning, but “I can’t say who’s doing it.”

Marketplace owner Lucky Cole said prostitutes “definitely create a security problem.” He said he would probably open his stores later than 7 p.m. if they did not come out around 8 p.m.

A spot survey of bars in the area indicated owners weren’t bothered by prostitutes.

“If a person comes into my place I cannot refuse service as long as they behave,” said Rosa’s bar owner Victor Garo.

“They’re just as human as anybody else, but I’d rather not have them in here. I can survive without them.”

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/07/10/news/story9.html

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Gang-rape trial ends in prison term, probation

The accused rapists are members of the military-associated hip hop group/gang known as ABYSS.

ABYSS
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http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Abyssmen/index-0.html

ABYSS is a family comprised of fifteen (15) members. This includes eight (8) rappers (Masterful Shabbar, Pnal, Blac Mist, Gilla, Soul Sorcerer, Vonstar Killaton, Zodiac Killah, & A-Killah), A Production & Publishing team (Redbone Production & Publishing), Management (ABYSS Entertainment), & a Record Co. (A-NA Wreckards). This makes a total of nine (9) acts; one as an entire group & eight (8) solo acts. A.B.Y.S.S. =A band of young swift soloists.

Being that members’ roots lie in such diverse parts of this country (i.e. New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Oakland, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Tacoma, Louisiana, L.A., & even Hawaii), each member offers distinct influence which in total creates and cultivates this strong founded sound, which is of its own, in a class of its own. The songs, solely produced by ABYSS, offers an insight into the life, ideas & ideals of ABYSS, presented in truth, delivered with an unprecedented fluidity, these depictions serve as the voice(s) of ABYSS.

It is often said that ABYSS has been blessed with apocalyptic & prophetic attributes expressed deeply within its songs. Whether through freestyling or a recording, live or not, with the innate ability to manifest raw unadulterated Hip-Hop, ABYSS proves to be among the cream. It is fact, clear & evident, that this industry awaits relief & refreshment from the monotonous & mediocre. The world impatiently awaits! With hard-hitting lyrics, diverse subject matter & lyrical content, & a music style unlike any other, ABYSSmen have the cure – ABYSS!

ABYSS, which cannot be measured, is not set as the measure itself. Hearing is believing!!

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Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Gang-rape trial ends in prison term, probation

By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

One man convicted in the 1998 gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl is sentenced to prison while another defendant receives probation.

Judge Sandra Simms yesterday sentenced Mario Crawley, 28, to two 10-year terms for second-degree assault and second-degree attempted assault, to be served concurrently.

Habib Shabazz, 22, was given probation and allowed to return to the Big Island, but not before Simms delivered a stinging rebuke and a promise to lock him up if he fails to abide by the court’s conditions.

“If you screw this up, you will be at Halawa (Community Correctional Facility),” Simms said.

The two were convicted by a jury in March of lesser sexual assault charges in the October 1998 attack at a Waikiki hotel room. The men contended the sex was consensual.

The state had argued the girl exercised poor judgment by agreeing to go to their hotel room, but that didn’t mean she lost her right to say “No” to sex.

Crawley yesterday said he is appealing the conviction and that more of the truth has yet to be revealed.

Crawley’s attorney, Michael Green, yesterday argued that the facts in the case did not warrantan extended or consecutive term. Crawley is currently serving time for a firearms offense.

Deputy Prosecutor Jean Ireton noted that Crawley’s past shows a history of “thumbing his nose at the court” and asked that he serve an extended 20-year term of incarceration, to be served consecutively, and a minimum three years and four months for being a repeat felony offender.

Simms noted that while the jury did not convict the men of first-degree sex assault as charged, “there is credible evidence on the record to support their finding” for second-degree assault.

While the facts about the incident were “disturbing, offensive,” she agreed with Green that it didn’t rise to a level that called for an extended sentence.

Simms did feel, however, that Crawley deserved a minimum term of imprisonment of three years and four months.

It will be up to the Hawaii Paroling Authority to decide how long he will actually serve.

As for Shabazz, the state contended that his refusal to take responsibility for his actions or acknowledge that the incident happened “argued strongly for prison time,” Ireton said. Shabazz was on probation for a burglary conviction on the Big Island that occurred shortly after he turned 18.

Shabazz, Crawley and a codefendant who was acquitted have been identified as belonging to Abyss, whose members have been arrested for promoting prostitution and drugs.

What angered her most, Simms said, was that Shabazz had the resources and supportive family that many other defendants who come before her don’t have, but he didn’t take advantage of it.

“You blew off your family, you blew off this court,” she told Shabazz.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/05/10/news/story13.html

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Schofield soldier found guilty in pregnant wife’s murder

Friday, January 28, 2000

Schofield soldier found guilty in pregnant wife’s murder

However, the military jury rejected the prosecution’s argument that the killing was premeditated

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

A military jury has found a Schofield Barracks soldier guilty of the unpremeditated murder of his pregnant wife.

Staff Sgt. Timothy Ward, 34, faces a maximum prison term of life without parole.

The six-member jury returned the verdict last night after hearing four days of testimony and deliberating for about four hours.

The panel, composed of three officers and three enlisted soldiers, was scheduled to begin a sentencing hearing today at Schofield Barracks.

Ward was charged with premeditated murder and accused of stabbing his estranged wife, Bianca, 15 times five months ago and then beating her skull in with a blunt instrument. The weapons were never found.

His attorney argued Ward “snapped” when faced with the possibility of losing his 19-month-old son and killed his wife during an argument in their Helemano home.

“This is a case and crime of the heart,” Maj. Claes Lewenhaupt told the five-man, one-woman jury.

In his 35-minute closing argument, military prosecutor Maj. Saul Contreras charged that Ward — a 13-year Army veteran from Georgia — planned to kill his wife, who was in the last trimester with the couple’s second child, after losing a custody battle for their son, Damian.

Contreras said Ward went to pick up his son on Aug. 26 and got into an argument with his German-born wife. He later confessed to Army investigators that he killed her.

“There is so much evidence to show that it was the accused who was the attacker and not Bianca Ward,” Contreras said.

“He was armed. He had a weapon. He stabbed her. She was unarmed.”

Contreras added that Ward, who didn’t take the stand, on several occasions last year told fellow 25th Infantry Division soldiers that he wanted to kill his wife because she wanted to return to Germany with their son.

He even told an Army mental health specialist last year that he wanted to strangle her.

But Lewenhaupt argued that “this was a crime of passion caused by adequate provocation” and Ward should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

“The bond between Staff Sgt. Ward and son Damian was bigger than life,” Lewenhaupt added.

Lewenhaupt, in his 40-minute closing argument, said Ward was holding Damian in the hallway of the couple’s second-floor apartment at 2900 Akoaakoa Court when his wife came after him with a dental instrument.

“At this moment Sgt. Ward snaps,” said Lewenhaupt, in describing the couple’s more than year-long custody battle.

But in rebuttal, Contreras labeled Lewenhaupt’s explanation as “ludicrous and laughable” because Ward in his five-page statement to Army investigators never mentioned his wife attacking him.

“It is fanciful wishes of the defense that it was in a fit of rage,” Contreras said.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/01/28/news/story12.html

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Soldier had ‘feelings of hatred’ before slaying wife

Wednesday, November 10, 1999

Soldier ‘had feelings of hatred’ before wife’s slaying

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Ten days before Army Staff Sgt. Timothy Ward allegedly stabbed and bludgeoned to death his pregnant German-born wife, he sought the help of a mental health specialist because he was afraid he would harm her.

During the second day of an Army Article 32 hearing yesterday, Sgt. Gerald Faletic, a Schofield Barracks mental health specialist, said Ward came to him for counseling on Aug. 16 “because he had feelings of hatred … (of) wanting to hurt his wife, and felt uncomfortable talking to chaplain.”

Faletic said Ward, 33, acting platoon sergeant with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 27th Regiment, was concerned at the counseling session “about his thoughts, and whether they were normal or abnormal.”

Faletic said the 25th Division soldier was fearful his estranged wife, Bianca, would win the custody battle for their 18-month-old son, Damian, and that she would return to Germany and he would never see his son again.

Ward made another appointment for a follow-up session for Aug. 26, after a child-custody hearing.

But on that day, Ward lost the battle for his son and allegedly killed his wife. He now is facing premeditated murder charges and the possibility of a death sentence.

Bianca Ward’s body was found in the second-floor bedroom of the couple’s Helemano Military Reservation apartment. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and her skull had been crushed.

After hearing 11 hours of testimony, Maj. Wally Clark, the Article 32 hearing officer, now must determine if there is probable cause to send Ward to a court-martial to face the premeditated murder charge.

Maj. Claes Lewenhaupt, one of Ward’s two defense attorneys, said in his closing argument yesterday that “this was a crime of passion and a crime of rage … not one that was coolly premeditated.”

He pointed out that since Damian was born, Ward and his wife have been in “a tumultuous divorce and custody battle,” noting Bianca in July 1998 fled the islands, taking with her Damian and large sums of money from the couple’s bank account.

Military criminal investigators during the two days of hearings said Ward filed charges in international court and in Germany to try to get his son back, charges that were dropped when his wife agreed to return to Hawaii in January.

But Staff Sgt. Benjamin Davis — who has known Ward for more than a year — said that on Aug. 26 after returning from the Family Court hearing, Ward admitted “he had lost it all” because the court had given custody of Damian to his wife.

Several hours later, just before 7 p.m., Davis said Ward came to his Waikele apartment with Damian, saying he wanted to talk.

“‘Me and Bianca got into it,'” Davis recalled Ward saying. ” ‘We had an altercation. … You have to take me to the MP (military police) station.’ ”

Under further questioning, Davis testified that Ward said “he pushed her and then he left. When he came back, he saw blood and panicked.”

“At times he was crying when he was talking, and he was like in a state of shock,” Davis said.

Maj. Saul Contreras, the prosecutor, referred to a diary — written in German and maintained by Bianca — which talked about verbal intimidation and death threats by her husband.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/11/10/news/story9.html

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