A 65-year-old man who has served 40 years in prison for the murder of an 18-year-old woman defended himself Thursday before the Hawaii Paroling Authority through a video feed, which had a minor glitch, from a federal prison in Louisiana.

William K. Medeiros said he could not deny the description of his criminal history made by Honolulu Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jan Futa and said those incidents had already been considered by the Hawaii Paroling Authority when it granted him a 40-year minimum sentence a decade ago, Futa said.

Toward the end of the video conference — held behind closed doors at the Federal Detention Center Honolulu — his video cut out and could not be re-established, Futa said.

The Hawaii Paroling Authority denied Medeiros parole, but he will have another chance in February and every year thereafter, said Paroling Authority Administrator Tommy Johnson.

"HPA was not convinced that he could comply with the current conditions of parole if granted the privilege of release on parole," Johnson said. 

Medeiros admitted before a Circuit Court judge in May 1971 to killing Medeiros’ friend Mitzi Iso Klotzbach. Her body was unearthed on a Waianae beach on Dec. 24, 1970 with a single gunshot wound to the head. She was allegedly a witness to a murder that Medeiros committed. 

Medeiros was also charged with murdering Herman Marfil and Charles Akana Jr. in 1970, but those counts were likely dismissed because he was already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole, Futa said.

If he received parole, he still has a federal detainer for another eight years of prison for two bank robberies he committed in 1970, Futa said. 

When Medeiros pleaded guilty to killing Klotzbach, he knew his sentence would be life in prison without the possibility for parole. Medeiros won a chance to be resentenced 10 years ago under a 1975 law requiring courts to review prison sentences and equalize them among inmates. After that, the Hawaii Paroling Authority decided that he should serve at least 40 years before he is eligible for parole.

In the 1970s, state prison officials placed Medeiros into the federal prison system because he was causing trouble, a Department of Public Safety official said. He remains at the high-security prison in Pollock, La.