‘Cool as Cucumber,’ Hilbun Stood Out in Crowded Bar

If it was his desire to disappear, Mark Richard Hilbun picked the wrong place when he wandered into the Centerfield Sports Bar & Grill, ordered a couple vodka cocktails and settled into a bar chair under a photograph of baseball slugger Jose Canseco.

The Centerfield, a quintessential neighborhood hangout, is also a place where most people call each other by name and where Humberto Ochoa and Demy Mourani never took their eyes off a strangely familiar man dressed in a Hawaiian-style shirt and white cotton pants.

Mourani said it was after midnight when, while celebrating a playoff victory by the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, his buddy tapped him on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of Hilbun.

There, standing by some pool tables, near a California Angels poster, Hilbun appeared “cool as a cucumber” as Mourani and Ochoa discreetly kept him in view.

“He looked right at me and I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s him,’ ” said Ochoa, 24, a computer operator from Huntington Beach. “I was sure it was him. Either him or his twin.”

“He (Ochoa) kept telling me, ‘That’s the guy! That’s the guy who killed the postman!’ He was right,” the 26-year-old Mourani, a mail sorter for United Parcel Service, said in a separate interview.

Before arriving at the bar, Mourani, also of Huntington Beach, said he had watched a television report, describing how the suspect in two murders and a string of shootings may have altered his appearance.

Mourani said the report included a composite drawing of a clean-shaven man with graying hair, a remarkably accurate picture of the man who stood near the bar.

“We watched him for a good five to seven minutes,” Mourani recalled at the bar later Saturday morning. “He started walking around just like anybody else, like he was just relaxing, like he didn’t have a care in the world. He didn’t talk to anyone.”

It was then that Mourani and Ochoa approached bar General Manager Frank McNaughton and told him who they thought was in the Centerfield.

“I was involved in a conversation when a guy who is a regular came up and was real agitated, real upset,” said McNaughton, recalling his encounter with Ochoa early Saturday. With a large crowd milling about the dim, pine-paneled sports club and the band Person to Person blaring in one corner, McNaughton said he at first had trouble hearing Ochoa’s concern. “He repeated over and over, ‘The postal killer is here!’ ” McNaughton said.

McNaughton said he remembers serving Hilbun a couple of cocktails made with Stolichnaya vodka and 7-Up, for which the man paid cash.

“I really didn’t get a good look at him at the time,” McNaughton said. “There was a lot going on. But they (Mourani and Ochoa) were adamant about it.”

Arturo Flores, 30, another bar manager who was there early Saturday morning, said he thought his two customers’ claims were “some bad joke.”

“At first, you don’t believe them,” Flores said. “I realized when I saw the guys (Mourani and Ochoa) shaking that something was going on.”

Asking Ochoa to keep watch on Hilbun, Mourani said he went to the phone inside the bar to call police, but could barely hear the dial tone over the noise. Knowing there was pay phone outside, he left the bar and walked about 100 yards down to the corner and made what he said was his first-ever call to police for help.

“I told the officer on the phone that I had a positive ID on the postal killer and that he was at the bar,” Mourani said. “They were down here in about three minutes.”

All the while, especially before police arrived, Mourani said he and his friend were worried that Hilbun might learn that he had been recognized.

“I got really scared,” Mourani said. “I was worried that he was carrying a gun, that he might have had a knife. . . . The place was packed, and I didn’t want him shooting up the place, you know. I didn’t want to get everybody hyped up.”

Surprisingly, McNaughton said, word of Hilbun’s sighting apparently didn’t go much beyond the bar.

“I really don’t think anybody really knew until the police arrived,” McNaughton said.

When officers drove up, Mourani said he went out to greet them and described the man sitting near the back of the bar, a cocktail glass and beer bottle at his side.

Outside, watching through the window, Mourani said he saw three officers approach the man and ask to speak with him outside. Their guns were not drawn, he said. A body search produced what appeared to be a hotel room key, and he was placed in handcuffs.

“He was very calm about the whole thing,” Mourani said.

“They (police) asked him his name. At first he gave them a couple different names, and then he told them his name, Hilbun. He really told them his name,” Mourani said.

Talking with police after Hilbun’s arrest, Mourani said an officer told him that they at first thought the call would turn out to be a false alarm.

“He told me they knew something was up when they got here and said my face was pale-white,” Mourani said.

It was only after police arrived that word spread throughout the bar of Hilbun’s arrest, McNaughton said.

“After that, a lot of people scooted out the door,” he said.

By Saturday afternoon, a number of customers were back to watch the National Basketball Assn. playoffs on the bar’s 14 TV screens and ponder the Centerfield’s sudden fame. Meanwhile, an army of reporters grappled for the attention of Mourani and others.

Television trucks filled the parking lot, and by about 2 p.m. bartender Barry Moquin announced that the Maury Povich show had called seeking interviews.

Awash in nervous excitement, Moquin suggested the bar print T-shirts with “We serve killer drinks” on them and proposed drinks called “postal shooters” or “postal punch.”

The T-shirts came first, when regular patrons Peter J. (P.J.) Pomery and Cam Fraser, both of Huntington Beach, walked in about 5:30 p.m. wearing the bar’s white T-shirt with the message emblazoned across the front and the word, “killer” printed in red letters.

“We figured, what the heck,” the 26-year-old Fraser said. “We wanted to make a little statement that the guy got caught here.”

Ochoa also was back at the Centerfield on Saturday night. Having spent a sunny day on a boat, he didn’t give much thought to what he had done the night before. However, he did call the U.S. Postal Service to inquire about the $25,000 reward, he said.

Mike Garcia, 34, a Dana Point postal employee, drove up to the Centerfield to thank McNaughton for his help after putting in a 12-hour shift Saturday.

Describing himself as a friend of slain postal worker Charles Barbagallo, the uniformed Garcia walked into the bar about 7 p.m., shook hands with McNaughton and quickly left.

“I couldn’t talk today . . . just too emotional,” Garcia said outside. “I wanted to shake the man’s hand and say thanks.”

Times correspondent Bob Elston contributed to this story.