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Co-worker: Capobianco talked about killing ‘again’

WAILUKU — A couple of months after his pregnant ex-girlfriend went missing, murder suspect Steven Capobianco made a comment about having to “keep myself from killing someone again,” a former co-worker testified Monday.

Paia resident John Palicki said that he had some concern when he heard Capobianco make the remark April 7, 2014, while they were working in the bakery at Mana Foods in Paia.

Capobianco was talking about having been with his “little cousin” and her friend and seeing bruises on the friend’s arm, “like someone had grabbed her,” Palicki said.

“That made him mad,” Palicki said. “He said, ‘I thought I would have to keep myself from killing someone again.’ ”

“Are you sure you heard the word ‘again’?” First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rivera asked Palicki.

“Yeah,” he replied.

Taking the witness stand Monday in Capobianco’s 2nd Circuit Court murder trial, Palicki recalled that Capobianco “was pretty upset” when he made the comment.

“He loves his cousin and her friend,” Palicki said.

“Did you think he was joking?” Rivera asked.

“No,” Palicki replied.

Capobianco, 27, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend Carly “Charli” Scott and second-degree arson of her vehicle.

He is the last person known to have seen Scott alive, telling police she drove him from Haiku to about 3 miles past Keanae the night of Feb. 9, 2014, to retrieve his truck, which he said had stalled there the night before.

After fixing a loose battery cable on the truck, Capobianco said he was driving back to Haiku, with Scott following, when he lost sight of her headlights in the Twin Falls area.

At the time, the 27-year-old Scott was in the fifth month of her pregnancy with a son fathered by Capobianco.

In December 2013 and a few months before then, Palicki said he was living in the Five Corners area of Haiku and would get a ride to work with Capobianco, who lived nearby.

During one of the rides, Capobianco said he was going to be a father, Palicki said. “We were just talking on the way to work and he told me,” Palicki said. “He said that Carly was pregnant.”

“He said that he just found out that they were going to have a baby,” Palicki said. “He was put off  . . . he wanted to talk to her but she didn’t want to talk to him.”

Palicki said he didn’t know Scott but had heard Capobianco mention her a couple of times.

In February 2014, Palicki said he was at work when Capobianco told him Scott was missing. “He looked concerned,” Palicki said.

He wasn’t sure if it was that day or the next day when he noticed injuries on Capobianco’s hands.

“There was a mark of some sort, a cut or a burn, across the top of his hands,” Palicki said. “He said he was helping a friend work on a car. A window fell on his hands, something like that.”

Palicki said that the mark he saw on Capobianco’s hands was depicted in a police photo of the backs of Capobianco’s hands.

Rivera asked Palicki whether there were serrated-edged knives in the bakery at Mana Foods, where Capobianco also worked as a baker.

Palicki said there was one serrated knife with a 14-inch blade and rubber handle that was shared by the bread and cake sides of the bakery.

“The one we have now is relatively new,” said Palicki, who still works in the Mana Foods bakery.

He said the bakery “finally got a knife.”

“What happened to the old one?” Rivera asked.

Palicki began to say “it disappeared” before defense attorney Jon Apo objected to the question.

Forensic anthropologist Rebecca Taylor, who examined bone fragments including two pieces of lower jawbone matched to Scott, earlier testified there were indications of defleshing or dismemberment on the lower right jawbone. She said that cut marks on the jawbone indicated a serrated blade, such as a steak knife, had been used.

Police found the jawbone fragments in a wooded area down a dirt road to Nuaailua Bay, which is about 4.5 miles in the Haiku direction from the location past Keanae where Capobianco said his truck had stalled.

Police searched the area, also known as “Paraquats” beach, in the days after searchers reported finding Scott’s black skirt, blue polka-dotted tank top and green blanket in the area, along with a pair of black jeans, a gray hoodie sweatshirt and two rolls of masking tape on Feb. 13, 2014.

Rivera asked Palicki whether masking tape was used in the Mana Foods bakery.

“Every day,” Palicki replied.

He said that masking tape is used to hold paper in place on an angled sheet pan used to display pastries.

Shown a photo of two rolls of masking tape recovered in the investigation into Scott’s disappearance, Palicki said that the rolls looked like the “general masking tape” used in the bakery.

“Do you guys keep track of those rolls?” Rivera asked.

“No,” Palicki said. “It’s hard to find them sometimes.”

Responding to a jury question about whether he asked Çapobianco to “explain himself” after he made the comment about stopping himself from “killing someone again,” Palicki said he didn’t.

“I kept working, kept making bread,” he said during his testimony.

“I thought it was odd so I texted my ex-girlfriend,” Palicki said. “She showed the text to one of her co-workers.”

That day or the next, Palicki said police called him at work and asked if he wanted to talk about the text message.

When Apo asked Palicki if it would be accurate to say that he described Capobianco as “kind of a weird dude” based on his interactions, Palicki said yes.

He also said yes when Apo asked if Palicki considered Capobianco “goofy” and “at times awkward.”

Palicki said it was the first time he had heard Capobianco say he had to stop himself “from killing someone again.”

“Did you take him seriously when he told you that?” Rivera asked.

“I was a little freaked out, so yeah,” Palicki replied.

His testimony followed that of Ashley Sylva, who worked as a cashier at Mana Foods until Oct. 1, 2015, and said she considered Capobianco “one of my best friends.”

“We hung out every lunch break, after work,” she said. “We occasionally met up on the weekends.”

Sylva knew Moreira “Mo” Monsalve, a 46-year-old Maui woman who went missing Jan. 12, 2014, and had talked a few times about her disappearance with Capobianco.

“I had asked him somewhere down the line, ‘What do you think happened to her?’ ” Sylva said. “He said if it was him he would just throw her off the side of the cliff.”

“Did he say why he would do that?” Rivera asked.

“Because nobody would ever find her,” Sylva replied.

She said that the conversation occurred before Scott disappeared. Sylva said she and Capobianco were sitting on the back hatch of her 2010 Ford Escape in the back parking lot of Bank of Hawaii, which is next to Mana Foods on Baldwin Avenue in Paia.

When Apo asked Sylva if one of the things she and Capobianco did when they hung out was “smoke pot together,” Sylva said yes.

She said Capobianco also had talked about other things that may have happened to Monsalve, who remains missing.

Responding to a juror’s question about why she would “testify against your friend Steven today,” Sylva said, “I don’t feel that I’m testifying against my friend. I feel like I’m trying to help and find answers as to what might have happened to Charli.”

Before Sylva testified, Judge Joseph Cardoza told jurors that Monsalve’s disappearance wasn’t related to the case. “There has not been, nor is there, any allegation that the defendant has had any role in that separate matter and has never been suspected of any wrongdoing in that other matter,” Cardoza said.

He allowed Sylva to testify over the objection of the defense, which argued her testimony would be “basically duplicative.”

“It sounds like they want to imply that Steven’s a serial killer,” Apo said.

Rivera said that wasn’t the case. He argued that Capobianco’s statement was appropriate evidence. “It shows what his intent is, his state of mind, what he’s thinking, his modus operandi,” Rivera said.

“It does fit into the totality of evidence,” Rivera said. “The rest of Charli Scott has not been discovered. Through extensive and exhaustive searches, the rest of her has not been found.”

The trial was scheduled to resume today.

* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.

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