The case of murder suspect Richard Shannon Costa is headed for trial.
On Friday, Kaua‘i District Judge Trudy Senda bound over the case to the Fifth Circuit Court in Lihu‘e.
Costa, 36, of Kalaheo, is charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of 18-year-old Weslyn Jerves of Hanama‘ulu.
Jerves’ body was found near the Japanese graveyard at Glass Beach near Port Allen on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 13.
Costa’s arrest was announced by Kaua‘i County officials on Monday,
Jan. 17.
Senda said she found probable cause to send the murder case to trial.
Costa, who wore an orange jump suit and was in shackles during his preliminary hearing yesterday, is to be arraigned on Tuesday, Feb. 1. He is in custody at the Kaua‘i Community Correctional Center in Wailua in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Costa confessed to the murder of Jerves, but through his defense attorney, Bill Feldhacker, later pleaded not guilty at his hearing held on Wednesday, Jan. 19.
During yesterday’s hearing, Feldhacker said his client was merely trying to defend himself and to protect himself from further attack by a knife-wielding Jerves.
Feldhacker said Jerves had gained a reputation on Kaua‘i as one who carried a knife, and that she had used the weapon against his client before she was killed.
But in asking Senda that the murder charge be sustained, Kaua‘i County Prosecutor Craig De Costa said Costa could have ended the confrontation once he gained control of the knife from her.
But he didn’t, and instead stabbed and cut the victim many times, indicating the suspect engaged in “unlawful deadly force.” De Costa told the judge.
De Costa also said the evidence showed Costa drove over Jerves’ right thigh, and following the murder, washed his hands, went home and washed his truck to get rid of any evidence of the crime.
Related to driving over part of the victim’s body, Costa had told police that he thought he was driving over a mound of dirt.
Kaua‘i Police Department detective Sam Sheldon, the lead investigator in the case, was one of three witnesses who testified at the preliminary hearing. Sheldon said he arrived at the murder scene at 9:20 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 13., and found the partially-clothed victim lying by two abandoned cars.
He said wounds on her right hand suggested that she tried to defend herself from her attacker.
Armed with information from people in the community, Sheldon said police investigators looked for suspects, and “the first person of interest” was a man identified as David Sims.
He was arrested for investigation of the murder and later released.
Shortly following the discovery of Jerves’ body on the morning of Jan. 13, Sheldon said he and two other police investigators picked up Costa after informants said they had seen Costa and Jerves together at Hanama‘ulu Beach Park the night before the murder, and at prior times.
Sheldon said he and KPD Detective Marvin Rivera held a first interview with Costa on the second floor of the new police headquarters on Kapule Highway in Lihu‘e.
Sheldon said Costa reported that he drove Jerves to Kalapaki Bay and to the 7-Eleven store in Hanama‘ulu at 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 12.
In his vehicle, described by some as a truck, Costa drove Jerves from Hanama‘ulu Bay to Glass Beach by Port Allen, and she had slept along the way, Sheldon said.
Sheldon said Costa told him that he and Jerves arrived at the West Kaua‘i beach around 2 a.m. on Jan. 13.
In other testimony, KPD detective Lawrence Stem said surveillance equipment at the Chevron facility near Port Allen Harbor showed Costa’s vehicle was parked at the beach from 1:52 a.m. to 2:20 a.m. on Jan. 13.
The couple argued after Costa asked Jerves about $20 she owed him, and the argument escalated to a physical confrontation when she told him that she would not pay him back, Sheldon said.
Sheldon said Costa pulled her out of his vehicle, saw she had a knife, and pushed her down to the ground, striking her back twice. He said Costa told him that with his right hand he put the “knife under her throat.”
Sheldon said Costa also cut one of the straps of the woman’s blouse and cut a panty she was wearing in the confrontation. He said Costa told him that she wanted “to moan before she died.”
Following the attack, Costa tossed the knife in the beach area, jumped into his vehicle, reversed it and drove over what he thought was a mound of dirt, Sheldon said.
Instead, Costa drove over part of the woman’s right thigh as he left the beach, Sheldon said. Tests are being done to confirm that a part of her body had been run over by Costa’s vehicle.
“He drove home and washed the blood off his hand, and went to sleep,” Sheldon said. Costa later washed off his vehicle “to get rid of the evidence he hid,” Sheldon said.
Jerves was found at 8:11 a.m. on Jan. 13 by two visitors from Las Vegas who were in the area, according to court documents.
The couple had been looking at graves at a Japanese cemetery when they saw Jerves’ arm between two abandoned cars at the beach, the documents showed.
Dr. Anthony Manoukian, a Maui County medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Jerves, said the victim died from multiple stab wounds and incision wounds.
Manoukian said Jerves suffered three wounds to the neck, a wound to the right shoulder and a wound to a lower chest.
She also had sustained five stab wounds to the right side of the back, two wounds to the left side of the back and three more wounds described by police as “defensive wounds.”
They included a knife wound to the back of the right arm and to the palm of the left hand. The last injury suggested that she was trying to retrieve the weapon from her attacker, Sheldon said.
But both he and Feldhacker agreed the palm wound was not consistent with a full-fledged “defensive knife wound” suffered by a knife victim.
In such a case, the victim would have suffered more wounds to the arms and hams as the victim attempted to ward off a knife-attack.
Costa later accompanied police investigators back to Glass Beach to retrieve the murder weapon, described by Stem as a “four-to-five-inch blade.”
Based on leads, Sheldon and two officers in plain clothes and in an unmarked police car, picked up Costa on Jan. 13. They then transported him to the second floor of the KPD headquarters off Kapule Highway in Lihu‘e for the first interview.
Sheldon said that while he and the other officers told Costa he was not a suspect in the stabbing death, they believed he was a suspect and advised him of his rights as a possible suspect.
But Costa was let go following an interview that went on for about an hour.
Based on more leads, Sheldon and Rivera again picked up Costa on Jan. 16., and administered a polygraph done by a trained member of the KPD, Sheldon said.
Sheldon said Costa had agreed to such a test during the first interview with police investigators.
Under questioning by Feldhacker, Sheldon said he didn’t force the test on Costa. “We told him we aren’t ‘forcing you to take the polygraph test,'” Sheldon said, adding that he, himself, never told Costa that it was in his “best interest” to take the test. County officials announced Costa’s arrest on Jan. 17.
Costa is currently confined at the Kaua‘i Community Correctional Center in lieu of $100,000 bail.
In asking for the bail to be reduced to no more than $20,000, Feldhacker said his client has no previous arrest record and has not been convicted for a criminal offense.
But Senda said she preferred to go along with a pre-trial bail report, which recommended the $100,000 bail remain in place.
Those drafting the report take into account numerous conditions in setting the bail, including the seriousness of the offense.
Feldhacker, however, can seek a reduction in the bail during proceedings in the 5th Circuit Court.
Lester Chang, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and lchang@pulitzer.net
