Page 10 - Dave Hawk News Today

Eventually this exchange occurred. >> has he brutalized you at a aal all -- >> its not going to stop until [ bleep ]. >> an hah moment? well, maybe. not quite. >> it seemed quite suspicious. most people in town seemed to have made up their minds about dave hawk, but one of them was not the d.a. >> we kept pushing and pushing and we kept sitting back. >> did the cops have it wrong? dave hawks longtime pastor thought so. coming up -- >> this person who is portrayed as such a monster simply isnt....

Ex-wifes murder. yet they were convinced he killed her. why? because they learned she was about to expos him for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars for a trust fund set up for his kids. now they had to convince the prosecutor to take the case to trial. and dave hawks actions were about to force a decision. here wen is keith morrison. i kept pushing and pushing and we kept sitting back. >> the prosecutor at the time, larry crouch, told his investigators he would not charge dave hawk wi...

Couldnt find the evidence to arrest him. dave remained a free man, something that made his own son, conrad, very nervous. >> my suspicion was growing stronger and stronger. >> conrad told the police about the night after his mother was found missing, when he saw his dad was sharing a bottle of win with his girlfriend. >> they opened it, toasted, and at the time, i thought my father and his girlfriend had really poor taste. >> they spent that summer on the outs after quite some time of not gettin...

>> instead, a year after debbie vanished, dave was charged with embezzling, stealing more than $300,000 from his own childrens trust funds. he pleaded not guilty, was released on bail. >> dave, how does it feel to be out of jail? >> and waited for the other shoe to drop. now, imagine this, the police, not to mention most of the town, believed their father killed their mother leaving three children caught in the middle. conrad had no doubt his dad killed his mom, a dad he began referring to as da...

Believed would show his innocen innocence. here again is dave morrison. the alignment of the stars in this case was just stacked against us. stacked against dave hawk. >> at least in the harsh court of public opinion it looked bad for dave hawk as his murder trial approached in hanford, california. dennis peterson and mark coleman were daves attorneys. >> this guy allegedly stealing from his kids, saying bad things about this sympathetic victim and all these things being widely played in the p...

About something he supposedly said to his girlfriend about debbie. dave said we wont be rid of that fing bitch until he is dead. >> i might have. but i dont remember that. and that certainly does not mean that im going to go kill somebody. >> there was his own son conrad who after all believed he was guilty and told police he saw dave and girlfriend mary share a celebratory toast after debbies disappearance. conrad, said dave, just didnt get it. >> whenever we open a bottle of wine, we always ra...

Somebody killed debbie. se kept up hopes, obviously, for the familys sake. but it was clear that she was not alive based on the crime scene. >> investigators poked around debbies life history looking for clues. >> she was very talkative, friendly, likable. she was kind of the life of the the party. >> this is debbies sister, diane, who recalled how friends set her up on that blind date years ago. he was the date, dave hawk. >> she was short and attractive and a lot of fun and pretty good sense o...

The money came from daves father. but dave controlled the funds and debbie was sure dave was stealing from them to support his own lifestyle. why would she think that? well, this was actually the second set of trusts established for the children. several years before a judge caught daves hand in the cookie jar of the first trust which listed both dave and debbie as trustees. dave was removed as trust yes of those funds. during the divorce daves father gave him sole control of a second quite gene...

>> oh, no. why are they putting it in? i thought it was harmful. >> though what the jury thought no one could say. then there was inevitably a conversation about whether or not dave would testify. >> i told them i wanted to testify. >> an idea daves attorney did not like one bit. >> dave is a combative individual, he is prideful, he is offended easily. >> he thinks he is smart and hates for anyone to think he is not smart. he would be perfect fodder for a trained prosecutor. >> and so dave held ...

>> still, the defense application for a change of venue was denied, as was the defense request to separate the financial charges from the murder charge. the defense argued that the embezzlement charges were unfairly prejudicial. >> they wanted to make him look like a bad person, a person who was likely to take money from his kids would murder his ex-wife. >> in fact, the prosecution was about to say that daves here that debbie was about to reveal in open court the theft of the trust fund was a p...