Court Hearing on Post Office Slaying Put Off

Attorneys for accused killer Mark Richard Hilbun were granted permission Tuesday to delay his preliminary hearing until July, giving them more time to review growing piles of evidence.

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

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

Deputy Public Defender David Biggs said outside of court that former postal worker Hilbun has been made “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 allegedly charging 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, partly for stalking a female employee. Police said he went to the post office that day to kidnap the letter carrier, Kim Springer.