A woman told a state jury Friday that she is the reason her fiance, Dale Rodriguez Jr., is on trial for murder and the man she was cheating with is dead.
The woman, 39-year-old Nisa Harada, told the jury, “My fiance is sitting there because of me. I cheated on him. I did this. He’s sitting in jail because of me.”
Rodriguez, 42, testified in Circuit Court on Thursday and Friday that he bludgeoned Jesse Waikiki on Dec. 9 to protect himself and Harada’s family after he saw Waikiki, 33, knock out Harada with one punch.
Harada said neither man knew of the other even though she had been sleeping with both of them.
She said she met Rodriguez in 2010, and they moved with her three daughters into a home on Salt Lake Boulevard in Aliamanu in 2013. She said she started having trysts with Waikiki in 2014 and hid the affair from Rodriguez.
Everything came to a head in the early morning of Dec. 9.
Rodriguez, whom Harada had kicked out a month earlier, stopped by the house to drop off some clothes before going to work. According to text messages between the two, Harada had been pleading with Rodriguez to return.
Harada said Waikiki was in bed with her when Rodriguez knocked on her bedroom wall to ask her to open the door for him. When she saw Rodriguez at the back door, Harada said, she panicked and started to cry, “‘Help me, help me!’ I screamed (Waikiki) was a stalker, I screamed everything that you could imagine.”
She said Waikiki, who had no idea what was going on, started screaming back at her, and her then-15-year-old daughter yelled at Waikiki to leave.
Harada said she ran after Rodriguez after he walked away from the home. She said she called 911 to keep up the charade, told the operator that there was an unknown male in her home and suggested that the male had broken in.
She said Waikiki, who had just been released on parole five days earlier, confronted her.
“You calling the cops on me?” he demanded.
She said the last thing she remembered was telling Waikiki, “Yes.”
Harada’s daughter testified that it was then that Waikiki knocked out Harada.
Rodriguez testified that since his arrest Harada has been visiting him at Oahu Community Correctional Center every week. He said she continued to lie to him about her relationship with Waikiki until his lawyer recently received copies of hundreds of text messages between her and Waikiki.
Defense lawyer Michael Green asked Rodriguez when he was on the witness stand, How he can still love Harada after learning about her lying and cheating?
“I just do,” Rodriguez said. “Nobody’s perfect.”
