Husband Arrested in Philippines in Stanton Butcher-Knife Slaying : Man Caught 12 Years After Wife’s Murder

A 38-year-old man wanted for the 1974 butcher-knife slaying of his teen-age wife in Stanton has been arrested in the Philippines and transported to Hawaii for extradition proceedings, the FBI announced Tuesday.

James William Robertson Jr. appeared before a U.S. magistrate in Honolulu on Monday and then was released to “local authorities” to await extradition to Orange County, FBI spokesman Jim Neilson said. He said he did not know when Robertson was arrested.

Philippine law-enforcement officials apprehended Robertson without incident on a warrant charging him with felony unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Neilson said he did not know how authorities captured Robertson 12 years after the crime but said the arrest followed a “lengthy investigation.”

In 1974, Stanton Police Capt. Leonard Haworth said, Robertson and his 18-year-old wife, Charlene, had a Westminster apartment. But Charlene had been living with her parents at their Stanton apartment, Haworth said, when her estranged husband arrived there the night of Oct. 3, 1974. He said Robertson had come over for dinner.

Haworth, who was the watch commander on duty that night for Stanton police, said the woman’s father told investigators that the couple argued loudly in a bedroom of the apartment about Charlene’s decision to leave her husband. The discussion moved out on the patio and got quieter, and then the father heard his daughter “screaming,” Haworth said.

The father ran onto the patio and found his daughter lying in a pool of blood. Haworth said the father told officers he saw his son-in-law running toward a car parked in front of the apartment*

Charlene Robertson was stabbed three times with a butcher knife that had a 12-inch blade, Haworth said. He said it appeared that she suffered a cardiac arrest and bled to death.

An arrest warrant was issued in Orange County the day after the murder charging Robertson with the slaying, Haworth said.

But it was believed that Robertson fled to the Philippines in the “days after the murder of his wife,” Neilson said, and a fugitive warrant was issued charging Robertson with unlawful flight, a federal crime.