Masumi Watanabe looked stressed the morning she disappeared from O'ahu's North Shore as she repeatedly waved "no" toward a white truck parked on Pupukea Road, a passer-by testified yesterday in the trial of Watanabe's alleged murderer.

Businessman and Pupukea resident Stephen Paty drove down Pupukea Road the morning of April 12 and told a Circuit Court jury yesterday that he saw a petite Japanese national matching Watanabe's description repeatedly crisscrossing her hands rapidly in the direction of a truck parked on the other side of the road.

"To me it was an obvious wave-off," Paty testified, as he demonstrated the woman's hand movements to the jury. "Whatever it was, she was saying no. ... She seemed a little stressed to me."

As he drove away, Paty looked in his rear-view mirror "and she's still waving."

Paty was the first witness in the second-degree murder trial of Kirk Matthew Lankford, a pest control worker from Kalihi who was 22 years old when Watanabe disappeared.

Watanabe, a 21-year-old visitor from Japan, has never been found.

In his opening statement, city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle described the 5-foot-tall, 100-pound Watanabe as "a painfully shy girl" from the rural Japanese island of Sado whose parents sent her to O'ahu so she could learn to be more independent.

Watanabe was the youngest of five children and the only daughter, who grew up to be quiet and modest. She rarely spoke to people or looked them in the eye and never went anywhere without her distinctive, silver-frame glasses, Carlisle said.

Watanabe always wore long-sleeved shirts and full-length clothes, and even swam fully dressed, Carlisle said.

After Watanabe was last seen crawling into a white truck on April 12, Carlisle said, "She was never seen by anybody, anywhere alive."

LANKFORD REACTS

Lankford, dressed in a black pinstriped suit, cobalt-blue shirt and blue striped tie, occasionally shook his head yesterday as Carlisle described the evidence found in Lankford's work and personal trucks; purchases he made at two stores the day Watanabe disappeared that included garbage bags, Clorox cleanser, a shovel, flashlight and work gloves; and his movements that were tracked on his company's Global Positioning System and by store surveillance cameras and receipts.

Carlisle also described what he called a series of false statements that Lankford made to police. Although Lankford told missing-persons detectives that he never saw or met Watanabe, Carlisle said Watanabe's glasses and DNA were found in the cab of Lankford's white work truck.

Carlisle showed the jury photographs of glowing traces of Luminol — which is used to detect blood — dripping down the passenger side door panel of Lankford's Hauoli Termite & Pest Control truck, on the passenger's window crank and in a pool on the passenger seat. Luminol also detected blood on the passenger-side floor mat and on the driver's side door that matched Watanabe's DNA.

"The last traces of her life blood were found in the truck driven by Kirk Lankford," Carlisle told the jury.

Lankford's attorney, Don Wilkerson, yesterday chose to postpone his opening statement until he presents his defense.

Watanabe lived with a distant relative on Pupukea Road and developed a morning routine of helping her relative get her three children off to Sunset Elementary School, where Watanabe volunteered in the library.

On the drive back home, Watanabe would exercise by getting out and walking 30 to 40 minutes up Pupukea Road, Carlisle said.

When Watanabe did not return by 10 a.m. on April 12, her relative contacted police.

"She became worried very quickly," Carlisle said.

Watanabe had no money and no phone, and spoke little English.

'THAT STRUCK ME AS ODD'

Lynette Talboys later testified that Lankford completed a Hauoli Termite & Pest Control job at her one-acre home on Pupukea Road at 9:20 a.m. on April 12.

On the opposite — makai — end of Pupukea Road, Lisa Nakayama testified that she bought groceries at the Foodland supermarket at 9:32 a.m. and drove mauka toward her home.

But she had to slow down because a white truck was parked in an angle in her lane.

A man stood next to the truck while a petite Japanese woman about 15 feet away from the man got Nakayama's attention.

The Japanese woman was looking up and away from the man, Nakayama testified.

"She was not looking at him," Nakayama said. "That struck me as odd. She looked very confused."

As she drove mauka on Pupukea Road, Nakayama also looked in her rear-view mirror and saw the woman crawling into the truck through the driver's side.

"I thought it was odd," Nakayama said. "Why would someone crawl into the driver's side rather than get in the passenger side?"

When Nakayama saw television news reports of Watanabe's disappearance later that night, "my heart started pounding and my hands started shaking because I recognized her," Nakayama said.

Between 10:19 a.m. and 10:44 a.m., the Global Positioning System in Lankford's Hauoli work truck showed him on Makana Road where Lankford had previously done work, Carlisle said.

A lock on a rental house on the property had previously worked but was found to be broken after Watanabe disappeared, Carlisle said.

"From 10:19 to 10:44, he's there," Carlisle said.

Then from 11:16 a.m. to 11:23 a.m., surveillance cameras at the Pupukea Foodland showed Lankford walking through the store in his blue coveralls and ball cap.

Foodland receipts show that Lankford purchased a package of 20 Hefty garbage bags, paper towels, a spray bottle of Clorox spray — "which happens to be very good at destroying biological evidence," Carlisle said — and a can of Full Throttle Fury energy drink.

Lankford then completed several pest-control jobs in Central O'ahu and on the North Shore before returning to Hauoli at 7 p.m. — with the passenger side of the front window broken, Carlisle said.

Lankford told co-workers that a bird had hit his windshield, Carlisle said, and left the work truck to be repaired.

Between 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Lankford attended band practice then went shopping again in his blue coveralls at Home Depot, just as it was scheduled to close at 10 p.m.

This time, Home Depot surveillance cameras and receipts showed Lankford purchased a box of 32 commercial-strength garbage bags, a flashlight, reinforced work gloves and a shovel. After buying the items, and just before exiting Home Depot, Lankford then turned around at 10:15 p.m. and bought a roll of duct tape.

Then, around midnight, "a very, very strange incident" occurred, Carlisle said.

A homeless man named "John" saw a man in pressed, blue coveralls digging a hole at the Kahana Bay fish pond using a flashlight and a new shovel.

"It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere," Carlisle said.

John's girlfriend had died a violent death in the area and he frequently visits the site looking for clues to her death, Carlisle said.

The man in blue coveralls identified himself as "Matt Ford," Carlisle said. But Matt Ford had no identification on him or in his white Ford truck, which was parked nearby.

When John said that Matt Ford should wait for police to arrive, Carlisle said, the man in blue coveralls "took his stuff, sped away and zipped off."

John has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, Carlisle said, and doesn't trust his memory.

So John used a knife to twice carve the license plate of the truck — NXF 562 — into the solid white line of the roadway.

A police detective later traced the registration of the license plate to a truck owned by Lankford, Carlisle said.

And the detective noticed something unusual about the name Kirk Matthew Lankford: By subtracting letters, Carlisle said, it spells out "Matt Ford."

"Whatever was going into that hole went that night with Kirk Lankford," Carlisle said.

Lankford's trial is scheduled to resume tomorrow morning in Circuit Court.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.