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Trial begins in
death of waitress

Steven Villa is accused of
second-degree murder of Jolene
Shott, who was found with
a belt around the neck

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By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

In early 1998, Jolene Shott was looking forward to leaving an abusive relationship and moving to the mainland to start anew.

Co-workers of the 35-year-old waitress at Red Lobster were happy for her.They said they knew she was unhappy and had suspected she was being abused.

Shott called her mother in Pennsylvania and told her she hoped to leave Hawaii before Mother's Day that year.

But her boyfriend, Steven Villa, whom she had left once before in 1995 and kicked out of her apartment in August 1997, didn't share in her enthusiasm, deputy prosecutor Lynne McGivern said during opening statements today in Villa's Circuit Court murder trial.

He didn't want their relationship to end or her to leave the islands, McGivern said.

In February 1998, Shott called Red Lobster, saying she and Villa had an argument and she wouldn't be going to work the next day, McGivern said. Five days later, on Feb. 27, police found her lifeless body in her Waikiki apartment. She had been strangled with a belt wrapped twice around her neck and tied in the back.

Villa, who worked as a trainer at a local gym, is charged with second-degree murder in Shott's death. If convicted, he faces life in prison with parole.

Deputy public defender Ronnie Kawakami said the state will be unable to produce "a shred of direct evidence" that Villa killed Shott.

The state will present circumstantial evidence that will either be "reasonable under the circumstances, inconclusive or plain unreliable," she said.

Kawakami is expected to call witnesses who will testify that Villa was the one helping Shott leave the islands by setting up her one-way ticket to the mainland with her dog. He told others also that he wanted to break up with her and that it was good that she was leaving, Kawakami said.