Can't delete TimeMachine backups from other computer

This is a follow-up to this post: https://discussions.apple.com/message/19314483 wherein I describe strange TimeMachine behaviour on my MacBook Pro and that of a friend.  That has essentially been resolved now, but my current problem is I seem to be unable to get TimeMachine to delete the backups I made of his machine while trying to fix his problems.
I Option-click on the TM menuling and choose Browse Other TimeMachine Disks.  I then choose the backups for his disk, we go into the Star Wars display and I choose a folder to (try and) delete.  The most recent attempt involved the Documents folder for an admin acccount which had hardly been used (if at all); this folder was empty.  I asked, via the Gear menu in the window, that TM delete all backups of the folder.  I then went away from my machine for over 15 minutes.  When I came back the folder was still there.
Is there some other way to get TM to delete backups, some way of saying "Yes, really, dammit, delete this thing"??  I know that sudo rm -r in the Terminal won't do me any good.
My ultimate aim would be to delete the folder for his machine at the top level of my Backups.backupd folder and thus get rid of all traces of these **** backups, but even just deleting what is taking up space on my disk would be a start!  I really really don't want to have to format my backup disk.

Your best option might be to erase the Time Capsule drive and then start over with new backups for each Mac....one at a time for the first backup.
If you decide to do this, you can erase the Time Capsule drive as follows using AirPort Utility.
Click on the Time Capsule
Click Edit
Click the Disks tab
Click Erase
The Quick Erase option will only take a few minutes

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