A former mortician accused of a near-fatal hammer attack on a downtown Hilo coin dealer said the victim tried to swindle him in a deal for some rare Hawaiian coins, groped him and attempted to perform a sex act on him, and that the hammer was used in self-defense.
Robert Diego testified Tuesday that on the morning of June 13, 2011, Donald Nigro picked him up at the Hilo Shopping Center so Nigro could pay Diego for the coins, which Diego said he had lent to Nigro a few weeks earlier for a pre-transaction appraisal. He said he believed Nigro was driving him to his store, Antiques & Coins on Kilauea Avenue, and that Nigro was going to give him a $34,000 cashier’s check and $1,000 cash for the coins.
“When we were near Cafe 100, he told me he was changing the deal. … He said he had a check for $18,000 instead of $34,000 and he was gonna give me the remaining $1,000 in cash and some jewelry,” Diego said during his attempted murder trial.
“What did you say?” asked Diego’s attorney, William Heflin.
“He told me if I didn’t take the deal, he was gonna call (Honolulu attorney) Michael Green,” Diego said. “He said he knows I have a judgment with Michael Green and he can call Michael Green. If Michael Green takes the coins, I wouldn’t have nothing.”
Green was the attorney for more than 100 plaintiffs who sued Diego, his former wife, a daughter and the family-run funeral home Memorial Mortuary in 2004 after Diego served two months in jail after pleading no contest to stealing from pre-need funeral plans.
Diegos never responded to the lawsuit. In 2008, a Honolulu judge ordered each plaintiff be reimbursed $10,000 for the lost funeral plans, and assessed $2.7 million against both Robert and Momi Diego and daughter Bobbi Jean in punitive damages, for a total sum of $9 million.
That judgment has never been collected.
“I thought I’d try to convince him when we went to his shop he could buy half the coins for $18,000. He could buy the other half later,” Diego testified. “But we never went to his shop. … We ended up going to his apartment.”
Diego said once they were inside, Nigro closed the door, dropped the phone and “grabbed my crotch.”
Diego said he responded by trying to poke Nigro’s eye, but missed and poked his cheek instead.
“And that’s when he punched me,” Diego testified. Diego said Nigro grabbed Diego’s shirt and told him he wanted to perform a sex act on him. He said he started to slap Nigro, but Nigro held on to his shirt with one hand and his crotch with the other. Diego said a shopping bag he had slung over his left shoulder started to slip, “and that’s when I remembered I had the hammer” in the bag.
“I grabbed the hammer and when he was down, I hit him on the back of the head maybe three or four times, or maybe on the side of the head, I don’t remember,” Diego said, adding it was in self-defense. “He was trying to molest me,” Diego said.
The trial continues today in Hilo Circuit Court.
