In one of Kings County's biggest court cases in recent memory, closing arguments in the Dave Hawk murder trial drew a large crowd on Tuesday, leaving standing room only for many of those attending.

Judge Daniel Creed originally predicted that the arguments would only last the morning, leaving the rest of the afternoon for jury instruction. Instead, the prosecution and the defense addressed the court for the duration of the day, coming to a close just before 5 p.m.

Prosecutor Larry Crouch began by calling Hawk a "liar and a thief" who killed his ex-wife to hide the embezzlement of "a third of a million dollars" from his children's trust-fund accounts.

"Debbie subpoenaed his financial records just before she went missing because she knew he was stealing," Crouch said. "She knew he was lying and betraying the trust of his very own children."

Crouch pointed to a financial dispute between the two from 2001, immediately following their divorce. Hawk used $1,500 from his children's trust funds to pay for his daughter's medical expenses. At that time, a judge ruled that Hawk had violated his fiduciary duty as a trustee for the accounts and ordered him to repay the amount.

"The court ruled that he could not be trusted," the prosecutor said.

When the couple's divorce was finalized in 2000, Hawk was ordered to pay back the $1,500, as well as an additional $45,000 to his ex-wife. Crouch said Hawk then took $60,000 out of the children's trust funds and used it to pay off the debts.

Much was made of the defense's claims that Hawk's use of the trust fund money benefited the children.

"So when Mary Royer went to the salon and got her hair done with the children's trust fund money, did that benefit the kids?" Crouch asked, angrily. "Oh, sure it did. Dad's girlfriend has to have nice hair, it helps the atmosphere at home!"

Throughout the prosecutor's closing argument, Hawk sat leaning back in his chair, left arm thrown over the arm rest, watching silently.

"The most frightening aspect of this case is the license plate," Crouch explained. "The presence of a different license plate, stolen days before, on Debbie Hawk's van meant that someone had woken up that morning knowing they were going to kill Debbie. It was part of a plan."

Crouch told the court that "Debbie tried to pursue her case against Mr. Hawk in civil court. And look where it got her. She didn't even get a hearing. But now she has one with you. All Debbie and I ask for is that you give her a fair hearing according to the rules of the law."

Defense attorney Mark Coleman pleaded with the jury not to let sympathy for Debbie Hawk and the need for justice to be served to sway their opinions in the case.

"The prosecution doesn't have a speck of DNA evidence, a single hair follicle, skin flake, anything linking Mr. Hawk to this crime," Coleman said.

The lack of physical evidence in the case has become a rallying cry for the defense throughout the past 12 days of testimony.

"The defense is trying to create inference by twisting and contorting the facts, presenting you with a tortured logic," Coleman said before the court. "They are trying to force a square peg into a round hole, ignoring all of the gaps in their case. The prosecution's argument is that because they haven't found anyone else who did it, it must be Dave Hawk. But that is not the law."

Coleman displayed several documents before the court detailing the juror instructions. He pointed out that the prosecution needs to prove Hawk committed the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt."

"Where's the evidence that Dave did it? How do you prove a negative? There is no evidence that he was ever in Debbie's home or her van," Coleman said. "What the prosecution has given you is a series of inferences that paint Mr. Hawk as a monster. This is a difficult case and everyone wants to see justice served for the missing mother, but they have not proven that Mr. Hawk is guilty of murder."

Prosecution Shane Burns gave the final piece of testimony before the court, calling most of the defense's case "a series of red herrings."

"The defense accuses us of twisting the facts," he said. "Yet, they are the ones who said Debbie may have been targeted for her prescription samples. Except when they mentioned this, they ignored the testimony by Debbie's employer that she never carried enough samples to make narcotics with."

Burns described Hawk's life as a "web of lies and deception surrounding his income." He pointed out that even Mary Royer, Hawk's girlfriend at the time, was told that his money came from "investments" and not from the children's trust fund accounts.

"He even lied to the people close to him," he said.

Burns asked why Hawk chose to lie about the use of the trust-fund money if he truly felt he was using it "in the best interests of the children."

He went on to detail the need for Debbie to not simply die, but to disappear altogether.

"It was important that a body not be there," Burns said. "Debbie was to become a missing person. When Mr. Lehman testified the other day, he said that Hawk would be the main suspect if the case was a murder. And that's why she had to disappear, to never be heard from again."

Many of the irregularities at the crime scene could be attributed to this, Burns said. The replaced license plate on Debbie's van, the lack of car registration in the vehicle, the removal of all her keys minus the one left in the ignition. As Burns explained it, all this was designed to help disassociate the vehicle from Debbie Hawk and throw investigators far off the trail.

"If she disappeared, Mr. Hawk would never be unmasked as a thief," Burns said. "All of the evidence points to him. The defense spent a lot of time talking about the evidence that doesn't exist in this case, but the evidence that does, shows that Mr. Hawk is guilty."

Jurors will be called back to the court at 9 a.m. today to receive final instructions and begin deliberations.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2425.

(Aug. 26, 2009)