Emotions captured the courtroom Wednesday during day two of the
trial where the prosecution is trying to prove that Hollister’s
Gustavo Covian was the hit man in an alleged murder-for-hire plot
connected with the 1998 disappearance of a Gilroy restaurant
owner.
SANTA CLARA – Emotions captured the courtroom Wednesday during day two of the trial where the prosecution is trying to prove that Hollister’s Gustavo Covian was the hit man in an alleged murder-for-hire plot connected with the 1998 disappearance of a Gilroy restaurant owner.
Four more witnesses took the stand, but the prosecution’s first witness – Gustavo’s younger brother Humberto Covian – overflowed with emotions while reaffirming the defense’s theory that Gustavo Covian is being framed.
“It’s a revenge-type deal. That’s why Adrian (Vizcaino) is making up all these fairy tales – he is jealous of our family,” Humberto Covian said of Vizcaino, a San Benito County Jail inmate who is the state’s key witness.
In the coming weeks, Vizcaino is expected to testify that Gustavo Covian bragged to him about murdering former Gavilan Restaurant owner and Rancho Hills Drive resident Young Kim.
“But when I asked you earlier, you said you and Adrian were on good terms,” said Deputy District Attorney Peter Waite to Humberto Covian. “Now you say he’s mad at you and you don’t like him – you’re lying to us.”
Humberto Covian, 25, had expressed discontent with Waite’s questioning all morning, and at this he threw up his hands and looked at Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas Hastings and asked: “What is this? I’m tired of all this, these questions, all these fairy tales. … It’s unfair to ask me all of these questions.”
Throughout Humberto Covian’s two-hour stint on the witness stand Waite grilled him about his alleged involvement in the disappearance of Kim. Waite continually asked him to confirm other witnesses’ stories that he had taken a friend to the supposed grave site in a Hollister creek bed and helped transport the body following the murder, and Humberto Covian repeatedly answered: “Never.” … “Never.” … “Never.”
As Gustavo Covian’s defense attorney Thomas Worthington began his cross-examination of the witness, Humberto Covian said that his former brother-in-law Vizcaino was “always jealous” of Gustavo and that’s why he told investigators that Gustavo Covian kidnapped and murdered Kim for a $100,000 payday from Kim’s wife of 24 years, Kyung Kim.
Throughout the day the incarcerated 39-year-old Gustavo Covian, clean-cut and dressed in a button-down shirt and dress pants, remained reserved and stern although he could face life in prison without parole if convicted of being the hired-gun in the saga twisted with alleged murder, extortion, extra-marital affairs, a deteriorating arranged marriage and a still missing body.
Gustavo Covian, his now ex-wife and mother to three of his children, Maria Covian, 28; Gustavo’s brother Ignacio, 31; and Kyung Kim, 46; are all charged with involvement in the disappearance and suspected murder of 49-year-old Young Kim, Kyung Kim’s husband of 24 years and father of her two children.
All four defendants are facing first-degree murder charges and have been in custody in county jail since 2001. The other defendants – none of who can legally testify in the current trial – will go to trial following Gustavo Covian.
After Humberto Covian stepped down from the witness stand Wednesday, two Korean-speaking friends of the Kim’s were called to the stand to testify that they lent Kyung Kim a combined $50,000 between July 1998 and March 1999.
Waite claims the money was used as payment to Gustavo Covian who continued to extort Kyung Kim for up to $100,000 following the alleged murder.
Worthington claimed that the publicity of Kyung Kim’s husband’s disappearance and the nearby construction of two large hotels had substantially hurt the Kim’s restaurant at 6120 Monterey Road, and that was the main reason for the loans.
Waite’s last witness of the day, Sandra Herman, was a manager at the Gavilan Restaurant and a friend of Young Kim’s.
“He use to always be yelling and screaming at her,” Herman said of how Young Kim used to treat Kyung Kim. “I saw him push her once and one time she had a black eye and bruises on her arms. … He abused the kids too. … She wasn’t in love with him – their marriage was arranged.”
Waite then asked Herman: “Did he ever say she hated him and wished he was dead?”
“Yes, more than once,” Herman said, “but I thought it was just out of anger.”
Herman then recounted the day in late 1998 at the restaurant when Young Kim had expressed to Herman and Maria Covian how she would like her husband killed, to which Maria Covian responded she knew people who could do stuff like that, Herman said.
Herman went on to explain how both the Kim’s were involved in extra-marital affairs and how Kyung Kim liked to drink in Mexican bars, gamble and take trips to Mexico. Herman said she talked to Young Kim about getting a divorce but she said it would shame her family.
Finally Herman said that following Young Kim’s disappearance Kyung Kim seemed “worried” and that she told Herman Gustavo Covian had begun extorting her and threatening the lives of her and her children.
But the body has never been found, and Young Kim’s friends and family will testify that he was depressed about his failing business; his dying father; his deteriorating marriage; and that he was considered suicidal, Worthington said.
Police have searched the alleged grave site of Young Kim in the Vibroras Creek’s dry bed near Church Hill Road with cadaver dogs and earth moving equipment at least four times since 1999 – most recently last summer – but have yet to recover a body or any forensic evidence. A .357 magnum was recovered from Gustavo and Maria Covian’s home during a search in 2000, but forensic tests for blood, hair, fibers and skin were inconclusive, and the gun cannot be matched to a bullet because the body hasn’t been found.
