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Witnesses say
they saw blood on
accused killer

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By Gary Kubota
Maui correspondent

WAILUKU -- Two Maui residents testified Brian Kawamoto was "calm" after fatally stabbing his 37-year-old wife Bridget in the couple's Waiehu Terrace home last year.

"He wasn't agitated," neighbor Milton Matsuoka told a Maui Circuit Court jury yesterday. "He seemed pretty calm."

Sara Seitz, another neighbor, said Kawamoto was "always very calm with me" and acted the same way after the killing.

Seitz said she saw Kawamoto, hands covered with blood, outside the house and asked, "What's the matter? What happened?"

"He raised his hands and said, 'I had enough of this s---,' " Seitz recalled.

Kawamoto, 43, an unemployed mason, is on trial on a number of charges, including second-degree murder, in the Sept. 24, 1999, stabbing death.

Police detectives found Bridget Kawamoto dead in the bathtub with multiple stab wounds on the front of her body and an 8 1/2-inch knife blade embedded in her back.

The jury trial, scheduled to resume Monday before Judge Shackley Raffetto, is expected to continue through early September.

Deputy public defender William McGrath is not denying that Kawamoto killed his wife, but is arguing that Kawamoto is not guilty of second-degree murder due to emotional distress.

Conviction for second-degree murder carries a penalty of life in prison.

During the trial yesterday, his stepdaughter Leona DeCambra said two days before the killing, Kawamoto threatened to kill her if she didn't tell police that her mother was a bad person.

DeCambra, 18, said the day before the killing, her stepfather came again to the house and accused her of betraying him.

She said she told him there was a temporary restraining order barring him from being in the house and that a neighbor might see him and report him to police.

DeCambra said Kawamoto stood several feet from her, holding a kitchen knife.

"He said, 'I should just kill you now,' " DeCambra recalled.

She said she dropped a lighted cigarette on his arm, causing him to drop the knife, and she and her sister fled the residence.

Kawamoto drove away in his truck.

DeCambra said on the evening of Sept. 24, she was at a neighbor's house when she heard her brother and sister screaming and running from the home, then saw her step-father walk out, wearing white shorts and no shirt, covered with blood.