Hilbun Granted Delay in Preliminary Hearing

Attorneys for Mark Richard Hilbun, charged with murdering his mother and a former co-worker, were granted permission Tuesday to delay his preliminary hearing until July, giving them more time to review rising piles of evidence.

Leaving jail isolation for a brief appearance in Municipal Court here, Hilbun, 39, was shaking, unshaven and looking exhausted as he waived his right to a speedy trial and Judge Blair Barnette rescheduled his preliminary hearing for July 6. It had been set for Tuesday.

While Hilbun talked to his attorneys through a wire holding pen, his father and stepmother sat inconspicuously in the back of the courtroom, watching nervously. Leslie and Mary Jane Hilbun left when the proceedings ended and declined to comment.

Deputy Public Defender David Biggs said outside court that Hilbun was unsettled in the courtroom because he was “quite agitated and nervous” by the news media’s interest in the bloody two-day rampage he is accused of carrying out.

“What I was trying to do was trying to calm him down and trying to make him feel like he was not on display, which of course he was,” Biggs said.

Hilbun is charged with stabbing his mother to death shortly before walking into the Dana Point post office and fatally shooting a mail carrier May 6. He is also accused of seven counts of attempted murder, three counts of robbery and one count of attempted kidnaping.

Hilbun worked at the post office nearly four years before he was fired in December, in part for stalking a female employee. Police said he went to the post office that day to kidnap the letter carrier, Kim Springer.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard King said Tuesday that his office is still studying the case to decide whether to seek a death penalty because of special circumstances--multiple killings and a murder committed during an attempted kidnaping.

Biggs said, “We’re anticipating a death penalty case because of the special circumstances.” He has already procured a second attorney, Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg, to help him defend Hilbun and is still considering using an insanity defense.

“Mark Hilbun has a long history of mental disease and defect,” Biggs said. “I mean, he has been seriously impaired off and on for over a decade.”

Neither Biggs nor King would discuss the specifics of the case, but both agreed that the evidence was mounting. Biggs said he still hasn’t finished reviewing 1,500 pages of police reports and nearly 100 video and audio tapes of interviews with witnesses.

Meanwhile, Hilbun is in custody in mental health isolation in Orange County Jail, where he is monitored every day by doctors from county mental health services, said Dr. Ernest Williams, jail medical director.

Hilbun, diagnosed as manic-depressive, is being kept away from other inmates for his own safety, police said.