Resentment Over Award Led Man to Kill Rival, Prosecutor Says : Courts: Opening statements are heard in the slaying of a Canyon Country tae kwon do instructor. Defense says blood found on the body is someone else’s.

Jealousy motivated Stuart Milburn to use a chokehold to strangle and kill a rival martial arts instructor and dump her body along a Santa Clarita road, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

With that violent image, the trial began for Milburn, 27, who is accused of killing Veronica Estrada, 29, because she was named instructor of the year at Taekwondo USA in Canyon Country, where they both taught.

“He felt that award should have been given to him,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury.

Defense attorney Darryl Mounger said evidence will show that Milburn was at the tae kwon do studio at the time of the killing. A blood smear discovered on Estrada’s body belonged to neither she nor Milburn, Mounger said.

Milburn is charged with murder, and with lying in wait and committing murder during the crime of sodomy. Foltz said he will not seek the death penalty, leaving Milburn to face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted.

Estrada, who was the American Taekwondo Assn.’s top-ranked female competitor in the second-level black belt division, was last seen the evening of Dec. 15, 1993, leaving the studio, where she taught 5- to 8-year-old students.

Milburn was among a group of three people who searched for her the next day and later found her partially clothed body among heavy brush along Soledad Canyon Road.

Friends at first, Estrada and Milburn’s relationship was later marked by conflict.

“She and Mr. Milburn had an ongoing animosity,” Foltz told jurors as he began retracing the events leading to and following the slaying.

Foltz said Milburn left work around 8 p.m. after telling Ken Lewis, owner of the tae kwon do studio, that he felt sick.

Around the same time, Foltz said, Eddie Hockaday, Estrada’s boyfriend with whom she shared a Canyon Country apartment, called the studio to see if she needed a ride home, but was told she had already left.

“She never came home that night,” Foltz said.

By the next morning, Hockaday retrieved a message on his answering machine from a female jogger who found Estrada’s wallet along Soledad. A search ensued, ending in the discovery of Estrada’s body by Lewis, who was accompanied by Milburn and another woman.

In contention is Milburn’s whereabouts at the time of the killing. Coroner’s officials estimate Estrada died around 8:15 p.m.

Foltz alleged that after Milburn left the studio around 8 p.m., he was spotted by Lewis at 9 p.m. near the studio.

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For the defense, Mounger told jurors that Milburn was at the studio when Estrada was killed, and said a studio employee remembers seeing him put a Christmas card in her gym bag around 8:20 p.m.

Mounger emphasized that prosecutors lack physical evidence, such as semen, to link Milburn to the murder or sexual attack which also took place. He also referred to a blood smear found on Estrada’s front leg.

“It doesn’t belong to the victim,” Mounger said. “It doesn’t belong to Mr. Milburn.”

The prosecutor said that two separate witnesses recall seeing a man and a smaller person wearing yellow sweat pants with a black stripe--what Estrada was wearing--in the same vicinity on Soledad on the night of the killing.

One of the women told police she saw the larger person put an arm around the smaller person’s neck and start pulling the individual off the side of the road.

Foltz said that Milburn was known to use a particular style of chokehold on students and that he had previously stated he could take someone out in seconds using the technique.