Hawaii

The Police Department That Refused to Solve a Murder

Published

19 hours ago

August 3, 2024

The Police Department That Refused to Solve a Murder

In February—two months after The Atlantic reported on a Hawaii murder case that sent an innocent man to prison for 23 years—Barry Scheck, the defense-bar legend and a co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, contacted a former FBI lawyer named Stephen Kramer to ask him for help finally solving the murder.

Read: The neighbors who destroyed their lives

On paper, things finally seemed to be going well enough for the Innocence Project’s client, Ian Schweitzer, and his brother Shawn, both of whom were convicted in the 1991 death of Dana Ireland. After more than two decades behind bars, Ian was released from federal prison in January 2023 and officially exonerated; Shawn served more than a year in the ’90s, and his conviction was reversed, too, last fall. But the prosecutors and the police in Hilo—where Ireland, 23 and on vacation with her family, had been attacked, raped, and left for dead—continued to argue, or at least imply, that the brothers weren’t fully in the clear. After Ian’s release, Lincoln Ashida, the prosecutor in Ian’s criminal trial, said in a statement that “another trial, prosecution, and conviction is possible.” When Shawn was exonerated, Ashida again said, “We stand by every fact that is already in the record.” (Ashida did not respond to a request for comment.)

For the Schweitzers, this was about more than just clearing their names. It was about getting the authorities to own up to the avalanche of errors that had led them to go after the brothers in the first place. (It was also, not trivially, about a pending compensation claim against the state, plus the possibility of a civil-rights lawsuit; Hawaii law does not allow anyone to receive compensation for a wrongful conviction if a court hasn’t found them innocent.) But the Hawaii police and prosecutors’ office weren’t budging. For the Innocence Project lawyers, this left just one thing to be done: find the real killer themselves.

Stephen Kramer is best known for cracking California’s Golden State Killer case in 63 days. He and a partner made use of genetic genealogy to link DNA evidence from crime scenes with publicly available genetic information collected by companies like 23&Me. By cross-referencing such information with other facts, including age, ethnic background, and family trees culled from obituaries, social media, and even high-school yearbooks, investigators have now solved hundreds of cases, finding suspects who evaded the police for decades. After retiring from the FBI, Kramer co-founded Indago, a company that is developing AI-assisted software to speed up genetic-genealogy investigations. “If a person can look at an obituary or a census record, why can’t you just teach software how to recognize that, too?” Kramer told me. He envisions a day when police, with just a few keystrokes, can use genetic genealogy to find possible suspects in any violent crime that leaves behind DNA.

Thanks to a cooperation agreement with the state of Hawaii, the Innocence Project had access to the DNA evidence in the Ireland case—semen from Ireland’s remains, as well as DNA on a T-shirt found at the scene that was also soaked with the victim’s blood. Both samples were attributed to a suspect designated as “Unknown Male No. 1.” It took Kramer just two weeks, using his new tools, to find a possible match—someone who, ever since 1991, had been living less than two miles from the scene of the crime.

Albert Lauro Jr. has a rather modest social-media profile—lots of pictures of him fishing and hanging out with smiling family members. He has the most minor of criminal records—a shoplifting violation long ago. Hilo is a small town, but the Schweitzers have said they don’t know him, and nothing public connects him to them. His ancestry is mostly Filipino. So is the DNA of Unknown Male No. 1.

Kramer’s program had gone searching for residents of Hawaii’s Big Island who had Filipino ancestry and shared relatives with Unknown Male No. 1. “If it was a typical Hawaiian person who had a lot of Māori and other islander DNA, it probably would have been a lot tougher,” Kramer told me. When Lauro turned up in the database, Kramer’s team did more manual records searches to confirm that he was a plausible age—he would have been about 25 when Dana Ireland was attacked—and that he lived nearby. They even learned that he owned a pickup truck along the lines of what would have been needed to drive through the thick brush to where Ireland had been abandoned.

Ken Lawson, a co-director of Hawaii’s Innocence Project, told me his team was relieved that Lauro had been found, but outraged that it had taken so long. “We have 110 banker boxes of documents” on the case, he said—thousands of pages, all scanned and digitized, of police notes and interviews, transcribed testimony, and investigation notes. The police were so focused on the Schweitzer brothers, they never looked elsewhere. “You put [Lauro’s] name in a search,” Lawson said, “it never comes up.”

After Kramer shared his findings with the Innocence Project, he brought the information to the FBI, which said it would work with the Hawaii police to obtain an abandoned DNA sample from Lauro—something he might discard in a public place that the police could surreptitiously grab and test.

But the Innocence Project lawyers were nervous: How could they know that the police would take this new suspect seriously, given how determined they still seemed to stand by their old suspicions of the Schweitzers? “We were certainly worried,” Scheck told me, “that when they eventually arrested [Lauro] and interrogated him, that they would try to, through leading questions or something, to get them to implicate our clients.” The lawyers wanted to closely monitor the police investigation, but the prosecutors’ office abruptly said it was no longer going to abide by the cooperation agreement, and stopped sharing information on its progress.

From the November 2022 issue: Jake Tapper on a Philadelphia teenager and the empty promise of the Sixth Amendment

Sometime in the spring, the police followed Lauro. When he discarded a fork in a closed food container, they snagged it, and brought it to a lab. Sure enough, Lauro’s DNA was a perfect match for Unknown Male No. 1.

The shoreline where Dana Ireland’s body was left. Photograph by Phil Jung

The Schweitzers’ team learned about it only days later. They then demanded that any questioning of Lauro or search of his house be videotaped. They wanted the police to isolate Lauro right away, to keep him from fleeing, destroying evidence, or committing suicide. The prosecutor, Mike Kagami, said in response that he thought the suggestions were “good ideas.” But the only way to compel the police to do anything was by going to the U.S. attorney’s office or the attorney general’s office, both of which refused requests by the Schweitzers’ team to step in. A motion in the case quotes an email from Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez saying that she’d passed the lawyers’ “concerns and proposals” on, but was “assured that the Hawaii County Police Department is capable of handling the investigation of Unknown Male #1, and that they are committed to doing so in a thorough and impartial manner.” The Innocence Project was officially locked out.

On July 19, the Hawaii police contacted Lauro and asked him to come to a local station to answer some questions about the Ireland case. During the conversation, which was videotaped but has not been made public, Lauro is said to have admitted that he had sex with Dana Ireland the day she died, but denied killing her (even though the DNA test indicated it was his T-shirt that was soaked with her blood). The Schweitzers’ lawyers believe he might have planned to say this ahead of time, because the statute of limitations for rape—unlike for murder—had long expired.

The police then asked Lauro if they could get a sample of his DNA by swabbing his cheek. He said yes. The police collected the sample and—despite his already being proved a match, and despite his admitting that he’d been with Ireland in her final moments—they let him go home.

The Schweitzers’ team didn’t know that Lauro had been interviewed until July 24, when the lab came back with another positive match. They were apoplectic. “They should have arrested him for murder,” Scheck told me. Even if Lauro had simply abandoned Ireland after she was injured, wouldn’t that be enough to justify second-degree murder?

The report from the police showed that Lauro was not in custody, and that his home hadn’t been searched. The prosecutors refused to tell Lawson and Scheck where Lauro was, on the grounds that the investigation was ongoing. But it had been several days, and Lawson knew that if Lauro wasn’t in jail, there was one other place he might be.

On July 26, Lawson called the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s office. He bluffed: “Can you tell me when the body of Albert Lauro is going to be released for burial?”

The officer who took the call put Lawson on hold. Then he came back and asked for the last name again. Lawson spelled it for him. “You got a pen?” the officer said. He gave Lawson the name of a detective and the number for a police report about “an unintended death.”

Albert Lauro Jr. died by an apparent suicide on July 23, a day before the Schweitzers’ lawyers even knew that he’d been brought in for questioning. Lawson could easily understand what would drive a person to do that: “With his family, how do you live with that?” he said to me. “How do you tell your grandkids, ‘Yes, I’m the one that did this to Dana’?”

In court, the police and prosecutors have continued to stonewall the judge and the Schweitzers’ lawyers, citing an ongoing investigation. “There are a lot of other investigative avenues, techniques, search warrants that we have been working on that we plan to continue working on,” Hawaii Police Department Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz said at a July 29 press conference.

The Schweitzer brothers have been asked not to comment for now. Their lawyers are petitioning the court for an immediate declaration of innocence for both brothers, and for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to investigate the police for letting their first real lead in a decades-old murder case slip through their fingers.

The Hawaii Police Department did not reply to a request for a comment, but said in a statement this week that “based on what the investigators knew at the time, there was not enough information to establish probable cause to arrest Lauro Jr. for murder.” Lawson pointed out, however, that Shawn—who was never accused of injuring or assaulting Ireland—was charged with second-degree murder for “leaving her in peril without seeking help.” If that was enough for Shawn, why not for Lauro?

The police chief told CBS News that any suggestion that his department had sabotaged the case was “abjectly false, 100 percent not true.” But both Scheck and Lawson can’t help but believe that, until the very end, the police were determined not to admit they had been wrong about the Schweitzers. They told me that of all the terrible things that have happened in this case—the years the Schweitzer brothers spent in prison, the decades of stigma they lived through, when everyone they knew believed they were murderers—this latest chapter is among the most outrageous. After condemning innocent men whose DNA was nowhere near this case, they said, the police have now let the man whose DNA was on the victim escape trial.

The police “wanted [Lauro] to flee or die so that they weren’t embarrassed,” Scheck told me. “We told them” not to let Lauro get away—“again and again and again. And we told the U.S. attorney’s office and we told the AG, and we told them directly in front of the judge, and [the police] went ahead and did it anyhow. So what does that tell you? It’s one of the ugliest, ugliest stories you can imagine.”

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Hawaii

Madeiran musicians celebrate Hawaii connections with origins of ukulele

Published

4 hours ago

August 3, 2024

Press Room

Madeiran musicians celebrate Hawaii connections with origins of ukulele

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Madeiran artists Roberto Moniz and Roberto Moritz are professors and musicians at The Conservatory in Madeira, islands off the northwest coast of Africa and part of Portugal.

They were in Hawaii to take part in several educational and cultural events, including today’s “A Day in Portugal Festa” at the Hawaiian Plantation Village.

The annual celebration of Portuguese culture featured food, activities and performances, including some by Moniz and Moritz, who play traditional Madeiran instruments, the machete, a small stringed instrument, and rajao, a guitar-like instrument with five strings.

Used in folklore dances of Portugal, the machete and rajao inspired the creation of the ukulele. The instrument was brought to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants and became a staple of Hawaiian music under the Hawaiian monarchy.

The two musicians and Shawn Yacavone, co-chair of the state’s Hawaiian Music Archives and caretaker of the world’s most significant collection of Hawaiian Kingdom-era ukulele, joined HNN’s Sunrise to talk about the relationship between Hawaii and Portugal and the origins of the ukulele.

Moniz and Moritz said they’re learning Hawaiian music on their instruments to bring back to Madeira and are planning more collaborations with Hawaii.

For more information, visit portugueseculturehistoricalcenter.org or follow their Facebook Portuguese Culture & Historical Center.

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Hawaii

Hawaii County Weather Forecast for August 03, 2024 | Big Island Now

Published

12 hours ago

August 3, 2024

Press Room

Hawaii County Weather Forecast for August 03, 2024 | Big Island Now

Hilo

Today: Mostly cloudy. Numerous showers in the morning, then scattered showers in the afternoon. Highs around 85 near the shore to 69 to 74 at 4000 feet. East winds up to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy in the evening then becoming partly cloudy. Scattered showers. Lows around 70 near the shore to around 56 at 4000 feet. North winds up to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Sunday: Mostly sunny. Scattered showers in the morning, then isolated showers in the afternoon. Highs around 86 near the shore to 69 to 75 at 4000 feet. Northeast winds up to 15 mph increasing to 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Kona

Today: Mostly sunny with isolated showers in the morning, then mostly cloudy with scattered showers in the afternoon. Highs 82 to 87 near the shore to around 69 near 5000 feet. Light winds. Chance of rain 40 percent.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy with isolated showers. Lows 71 to 76 near the shore to around 57 near 5000 feet. Light winds. Chance of rain 20 percent.

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Sunday: Mostly sunny in the morning, then mostly cloudy with isolated showers in the afternoon. Highs 82 to 87 near the shore to around 69 near 5000 feet. Light winds becoming west up to 10 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 20 percent.

Waimea

Today: Breezy. Partly sunny with scattered showers. Highs around 83 near the shore to 69 to 80 near 3000 feet. East winds up to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy in the evening then becoming partly cloudy. Breezy. Scattered showers. Lows around 70 near the shore to 58 to 64 near 3000 feet. East winds up to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent.

Sunday: Mostly sunny. Breezy. Scattered showers in the morning, then isolated showers in the afternoon. Highs around 84 near the shore to 69 to 80 near 3000 feet. East winds 10 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent.

Kohala

Today: Breezy. Partly sunny with scattered showers. Highs around 83 near the shore to 69 to 80 near 3000 feet. East winds up to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

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South Big Island

Today: Breezy. Mostly sunny with isolated showers in the morning, then mostly cloudy with scattered showers in the afternoon. Highs around 86 near the shore to around 73 near 5000 feet. East winds up to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy. Breezy. Lows around 72 near the shore to around 55 near 5000 feet. East winds up to 20 mph.

Sunday: Sunny in the morning then becoming partly sunny. Breezy. Highs around 86 near the shore to around 73 near 5000 feet. East winds up to 25 mph.

Puna

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Tonight: Mostly cloudy in the evening then becoming partly cloudy. Scattered showers. Lows around 70 near the shore to around 56 at 4000 feet. North winds up to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Waikoloa

Today: Mostly sunny with isolated showers in the morning, then mostly cloudy with scattered showers in the afternoon. Highs around 86 near the shore to 70 to 76 above 4000 feet. Northwest winds up to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy. Lows around 74 near the shore to 53 to 60 above 4000 feet. Northeast winds up to 15 mph shifting to the southeast after midnight.

Sunday: Sunny in the morning then becoming partly sunny. Highs around 86 near the shore to 70 to 76 above 4000 feet. Northeast winds up to 15 mph.

Synopsis

Light to moderate trades will persist today, with a band of enhanced moisture bringing some showery weather to portions of the state this morning. Drier conditions are expected this afternoon, however sea breeze development will allow for a few showers to develop in leeward areas this afternoon. The trades will ramp back up tonight, then hold at moderate to breezy levels Sunday through Thursday. Rather dry conditions will prevail Sunday through Wednesday, with a trend toward more showery conditions late next week.

Discussion

Currently at the surface, a ridge of high pressure located around 225 miles north of Kauai is producing light trade winds with land breezes present in many areas across the island chain. Infrared satellite imagery shows mostly cloudy conditions across much of the state, with a few areas around the Big Island seeing a bit less cloud cover. Radar imagery shows scattered showers moving into windward areas, with the coverage highest from Oahu to Big Island where leeward areas are seeing some shower activity as well. Main short term focus revolves around trade wind trends and rain chances during the next couple days.
The ridge of high pressure north of the islands will remain nearly stationary today, keeping light to moderate trades in place and allowing some sea breeze development in leeward areas. The ridge will lift northward late today through the remainder of the weekend, allowing the trades to gradually increase to moderate and breezy levels by Sunday, and hold at these levels through much of next week.
As for the remaining weather details, an area of enhanced moisture will bring some showery weather to windward areas and send some of these showers into leeward locales through the morning hours today. Drier conditions should develop by afternoon, with a few showers developing over leeward terrain with the assistance of localized sea breezes. Rather dry conditions are then expected tonight through the middle of next week, with mid-level ridging and stronger trades keeping light showers confined primarily to windward and mauka areas. Mid-level ridging begins to break down late next week, which should bring an increase in trade wind showers to the island chain.

Aviation

Light to moderate easterly trade winds will persist through this afternoon. Flow should be light enough to bring nighttime land breezes and daytime sea breezes over each island. Clouds and showers will favor windward and mauka areas through the period, with some afternoon development over leeward interior areas. Brief MVFR ceilings and visibility will be possible in showers, especially over windward portions of the smaller islands, but expect VFR conditions to generally prevail at the TAF sites.
AIRMET Sierra is currently in effect for mountain obscuration above 2500 feet for north thru southeast sections of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, and Maui.

Marine

Trades will steadily increase over the weekend as the surface ridge nearby lifts northward and strengthens. The strongest winds are expected over the windier waters and channels around Maui County and the Big Island beginning tonight, which will require a Small Craft Advisory. Little change in wind speed is expected through the first half of next week.
Surf along south-facing shores will remain up through Monday as a medium period south-southwest swell moves through. The nearshore and offshore buoy observations reflect this swell and show the peak energy holding within the 13-14 second bands this morning. A downward trend is expected Tuesday through midweek, with mainly background southerly energy expected. A similarly sized south- southwest swell is possible next weekend.
Surf along north and west-facing shores will trend up late Sunday through Monday as an out-of-season, small north-northwest swell arrives. This trend with small north-northwest pulses could persist through a good portion of the upcoming week due to broad low pressure positioned far north of the state near the Aleutians.
Surf along east-facing shores will pick up slightly later this weekend through early next week as the trades increase. Although confidence remains low being so far out in time, guidance is hinting at a medium- to long-period easterly swell arriving late next week through next weekend due to the uptick in tropical activity across the far eastern Pacific.
Higher-than-predicted water levels combined with near-peak monthly tides and a decent south swell moving through could lead to minor coastal flooding/runup impacts through the weekend. The best chance for coastal impacts will occur during the afternoon hours around the peak daily high tide cycles.

HFO Watches/Warnings/Advisories

None.

Big Island Now Weather is brought to you by Blue Hawaiian Helicopters.

Check out their Big Island Helicopter Tours today!

Data Courtesy of NOAA.gov

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Hawaii

Hawaii announces $4 billion settlement in Maui fire cases – DW – 08/03/2024

Published

1 day ago

August 3, 2024

Press Room

Hawaii announces billion settlement in Maui fire cases – DW – 08/03/2024

Hawaiian Electric Industries is among several defendants who agreed on Friday to pay more than $4 billion (€3.7 billion) to settle lawsuits over the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires.

The utility operating on the island and its parent, Hawaiian Electric, are liable for $1.99 billion of the amount before tax.

It also includes $75 million previously contributed to the One Ohana Initiative.

“We’re under no illusions that this is going to make Maui whole,” Jake Lowenthal, a Maui attorney selected as one of four liaisons for the coordination of the cases, told The Associated Press. “We know for a fact that it’s not going to make up for what they lost.”

What do we know about the settlement?

Hawaii Governor Josh Green said in a statement that seven defendants will pay the $4.037 billion to compensate those who have already brought claims for the August 8, 2023, fires.

The wildfires killed 102 people and destroyed the historic downtown area of Lahaina on Maui, with Green saying the proposed settlement is an agreement in principle and would “help our people heal.”

“My priority as governor was to expedite the agreement and to avoid protracted and painful lawsuits so as many resources as possible would go to those affected by the wildfires as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement.

“It will be good that our people don’t have to wait to rebuild their lives as long as others have in many places that have suffered similar tragedies,” Green said.

Meanwhile, Thomas Leonard, who lost his apartment in the fire and spent hours in the ocean behind a seawall hiding from the flames, said: “It gives us something to work with. I’m going to need that money to rebuild.”

Maui housing crisis lingers months after Hawaii wildfires

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Who was being sued?

Hawaiian Electric and defendants, including county officials, faced lawsuits over the blazes that tore through Maui last year, causing deaths, destroying thousands of properties and causing damage estimated at $5 billion.

The lawsuits claimed the utility company failed to shut down power lines despite previous warnings that high winds might blow them down and spark wildfires.

Settlement payments will begin after judicial approval and are expected to be made from mid-2025, Hawaiian Electric said in a statement.

km/sms (AP, Reuters, AFP)

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