Old-fashioned police work and high-tech investigative tools were on display yesterday in the trial of accused murderer Kirk Lankford.

A scientist at the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world testified the lab matched the prescription on a pair of eyeglasses found by police with that of glasses worn by Masumi Watanabe, who is presumed dead.

But a police officer testified yesterday that the case also was built using interviews with witnesses who were in the area around the time Watanabe was last seen, on April 12, 2007.

Scientific evidence was supplied with the help of the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base. JPAC helps identify the remains of Americans listed as missing in action in Vietnam and other wars.

JPAC forensic anthropologist Greg Berg testified that a pair of eyeglasses found by police in Lankford's Hauoli Pest Control truck matched the prescription for the glasses that Watanabe wore.

Watanabe had "extremely poor vision," and for every 1 million people wearing prescription glasses, only 2.5 individuals would use the same lenses as Watanabe's, Berg testified.

Watanabe's vision was "extremely myopic and very astigmatic," Berg said.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASE

Watanabe's remains have never been recovered and the case against Lankford is built almost entirely on circumstantial evidence.

Lankford has pleaded not guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

His attorney, Don Wilkerson, has asked questions of some witnesses in the case indicating that Lankford may have accidentally struck Watanabe while she was walking by the side of Pupukea Road.

Traditional police legwork was highlighted by the testimony of officer Phil Camero, who spoke about gathering information from witnesses who saw a Hauoli Pest Control truck in the area where Watanabe disappeared.

Camero said he learned that Lankford was a Hauoli employee working in the area that day and interviewed Lankford as a possible witness in what was then a missing person case.

A tape recording of the interview, conducted at the main police station April 13, was played for the jury yesterday.

Camero showed Lankford a photograph of Watanabe and asked if he recognized her.

"No, I don't," Lankford said.

"Did you ever make any contact with Masumi Watanabe?" Camero asked.

"No," Lankford answered.

But the following day, April 14, Camero had a "startling" discussion with a police detective that changed Camero's attitude about Lankford, the officer testified.

The detective, Randal Nakamura, told Camero that he had interviewed a witness, John Thoma, who had encountered a man digging a hole by flashlight the night of April 12 in a remote area of O'ahu's North Shore.

SURPRISING NEWS

Nakamura learned the identity of the hole-digger through the license plate number of the vehicle he was driving. Then he obtained a driver's license photograph of the man and showed it to Camero the following day.

"He showed me a driver's license of Kirk Lankford and asked me 'Is this the driver of the (Hauoli) truck?'" Camero testified.

"I was totally startled," the officer said on the witness stand.

At that point, Camero said, "Mr. Lankford was not a witness but a person of interest."

Camero then learned that all Hauoli Pest Control trucks had been equipped with Global Positioning System devices that use satellite signals to precisely track the locations of the vehicles when they were out in the field.

With data from the GPS device installed on Lankford's truck, Camero said, he was able to plot the locations where the vehicle made "unscheduled stops" on the day Watanabe disappeared.

He said he even took the GPS data, supplied by the Mainland company that manufactured the GPS tracking system, home with him at night "just to figure out the clues to this puzzle."

"I was looking at a time frame that Masumi Watanabe disappeared and correlating it with hard evidence that Mr. Lankford was in the vicinity," Camero said.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.