Trial to Begin in Murder of Woman Over Black Corvette

When the guns came out, Ryoko Hanano’s fear led her instinctively to her religious convictions.

As two gunmen handcuffed her to her husband at the kitchen table of their Anaheim home, she prayed to Buddha. Then she chanted a prayer while the men hustled them down a hallway to a bedroom.

Hanano prayed so loudly that one of the intruders yelled at her to shut up. But the litany did not stop until a bullet crashed into the back of her head, killing her.

The slaying is known as the Corvette murder, after the Chevrolet sports car the Hananos owned. Prosecutors contend that three people killed the 60-year-old woman and maimed her husband, Kazumi, on July 19, 1988, in a plot to steal the couple’s 1984 Corvette, which had been put up for sale.

Witnesses in the murder case will begin taking the stand Monday before Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno. But when Kazumi Hanano is called to testify from his wheelchair, the Corvette will become secondary to what happened after two prospective car buyers pulled guns and handcuffs from a briefcase instead of money to pay for the couple’s car.

“It’s a horrifying set of facts,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown said at a pretrial hearing last week.

Ryoko Hanano died instantly from the gunshot. Her husband, who was handcuffed to her limp body for six hours until he was discovered by their 19-year-old son, Dean, was left permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

Kazumi Hanano said he had been leery about letting the three defendants into his house. He described them as “Hells Angels” types but relented and dropped his guard.

“You know, who would think they were gonna come hold me up for a car?” he recalled.

Two defendants, Robert (T-Bone) Taylor, 39, of Sunset Beach, and James Norman Dewitt, 36, of Cypress, face a possible death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for the third defendant, Nanette Marie Scheid, 29, of Newport Beach, who is accused of setting up the ruse to buy the Corvette. If convicted of murder, she will face an automatic 25 years to life in prison.

To prove his case, prosecutor Brown will not have difficulty placing the accused at the scene. None of them are challenging Hanano’s eyewitness descriptions of them, yet they are putting on three separate defenses, complicating the prosecution’s task.

Scheid contends that she thought Taylor, her boyfriend, really intended to buy the Corvette. She told police that she left the Hanano house on Taylor’s orders while Taylor and Dewitt ironed out details of the sale.

“She was set up by the two male defendants,” her attorney, Charles Margines, argued to the court at a pretrial hearing. “The evidence fails to establish that she was involved in any of the crimes.”

Dewitt refused to acknowledge to police that he was in the Hanano house that night. But his attorney, George Peters, recognizes the fact that Hanano and the other two defendants claim Dewitt was there.

Peters has told the court that he will concentrate on the “special circumstances” that would permit prosecutors to seek the death penalty. He said he will try to show that Dewitt was not the triggerman and did not know a killing was to occur.

To qualify someone for the death penalty, jurors are required by law to find that a defendant knew the incident they participated in was going to involve killing.

Taylor, who has almost a dozen criminal convictions dating back to 1971, might have sealed his own fate in the case, according to police and court records. Before he had an attorney, he not only confessed to the police, he took full responsibility and tried to clear his co-defendants.

“The whole thing was my plan. I was stressing out on having money. . . . I set out on a phony buy,” Taylor said, adding that he did not try to kill both Hananos to eliminate witnesses. “It just got out of hand. Too much drugs, too much happening. Too much everything. No way home.”

Taylor was arrested near his Sunset Beach apartment when police caught him driving the Hananos’ black Corvette three days after the shooting. Taylor even told police where he had hidden the .45-caliber gun used in the shootings.

Taylor said Dewitt was not even in the house, contradicting Hanano’s statements that he was one of the gunmen.

Dewitt has been less charitable toward Taylor. He told police that Taylor confessed to him two previous murders, although prosecutors say they do not intend to use that statement.

Taylor, Dewitt and Scheid learned about the Corvette through an ad the Hananos had placed in Auto Trader magazine. Hanano said Scheid first came to the house alone and test-drove the car. He quoted her as saying, “It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

She returned before dark with the two men. Scheid told police that she and Taylor had only been going together about two weeks. She said she had met Dewitt for the first time that day.

At the Hananos’ house, Scheid told police, Taylor sent her back out to the borrowed van they were using to get a briefcase, which supposedly contained cash for the Corvette. Then he sent her home.

Hanano testified at a previous court hearing that after Scheid returned with Dewitt and Taylor, he allowed Taylor to test-drive the Corvette. He and his wife obliged when the prospective buyers wanted a few beers.

When Taylor asked that the price on the bill of sale read $1,500 instead of $20,000 for tax reasons, Hanano said his wife did not like it, but finally agreed to sign the sales receipt with him.

After that, Hanano said, Taylor pulled guns from the briefcase, handed one to Dewitt, and announced, “This is the way we’re going to go.” Hanano told the court that his wife became so frightened that she chanted loudly. He said Dewitt became annoyed and told her to shut up.

“I think it riled them up since she kept on saying her prayers,” Hanano said.

Prosecutors say that Scheid might be the most difficult case to prove because she left the house well before the shooting happened. But her earlier statements to police include inconsistencies.

For example, she first told police that she did not return to the house after the first test-drive, then finally admitted that she did. She also said that she had not seen Taylor since the night before the shootings. Also, she said that the car was for her and Taylor together.

“So after two weeks of being T-Bone’s girlfriend, he’s going to buy you both a car?” police asked Scheid.

“Right,” Scheid answered.

Perhaps more damaging to Scheid is a rough diagram of the inside of the Hanano house that was found in Dewitt’s possession. Scheid’s thumbprint is on it. The diagram was not the kind of information a prospective car buyer needs.

Dewitt, who also has a long record of arrests and convictions, told police he would not take a murder rap for anybody. “I like my freedom,” he said.