Hawai‘i County police went beyond FBI and U.S. Department of Justice procedures when a swab was taken from Dana Ireland murder suspect Albert Lauro Jr. when they already had DNA linking him directly to the crimes, according to the former FBI attorney and federal prosecutor who first identified Lauro.
“It’s incredible to me. You just don’t do that,” said Stephen Kramer, whose “genetic genealogy” techniques led to Lauro in February.
Four days after the swab, Lauro killed himself at his home in Hawaiian Paradise Park on July 23 — three decades after Dana Ireland, a 23-year-old visitor from Virginia, was run over on Christmas Eve 1991 while riding a bike, raped and left for dead. Ireland died on Christmas Day, and the case would become one of Hawai‘i’s most notorious.
On July 19, Lauro, 57, was asked to come in for questioning, and a court-ordered cheek swab was taken. That DNA again linked him to evidence collected in 1991. The interview lasted about an hour until Lauro asked to leave.
But the court-ordered test came after DNA had already matched Lauro to the Ireland case.
Lauro had not been considered a suspect until he was genetically traced in February by Kramer, whose previous genetic work solved the “Golden State Killer” serial rapes and murders in California in 2018.
Police and an FBI agent from the Honolulu field office who had Lauro under surveillance already had retrieved a fork from a plate lunch he discarded, which matched Lauro’s DNA to the DNA found on Ireland and on a bloodied T-shirt that was left at the crime scene.
On Monday, Hawai‘i County Police Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz said the statute of limitations had run out to charge Lauro with sexual assault and that police did not have enough probable cause to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Lauro killed Ireland.
But Kramer said taking another DNA sample at the police station July 19 served no additional purpose other than to tip Lauro off that he was a suspect in a serious crime, which can cause suspects to become fugitives, destroy evidence or kill themselves — as Lauro did.
“It’s black and white. They had his DNA on the fork that comes back as a perfect match,” Kramer told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday.
“So they’ve got him and they know it’s him. In every case I’ve done, you go get surreptitious DNA like the fork, and that becomes your probable cause to arrest this person. Why are you then talking to him and swabbing him and don’t arrest him? I can’t think of an investigative reason to swab him for DNA when you’ve already got a match.”
The FBI said its agent assisted Hawai‘i County police and referred questions to them.
Moszkowicz told the Star-Advertiser in an email: “We have been in close contact with the FBI Honolulu Field Office over the past few months regarding this case and are extremely grateful for their assistance throughout our investigation. We can confirm that an FBI agent was present when investigators questioned and released Albert Lauro Jr. on July 19.
“It is important to note that the protocols and procedures followed in this case were those of the Hawai‘i Police Department, not the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you are looking for information on FBI protocols or procedures and how they may apply in a state prosecution, we suggest you contact the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office for comment.”
Kramer was working for the FBI when he read a newspaper article in 2013 about the fruitless search for the Golden State Killer. DNA evidence had been in wide use but was not enough to lead to a suspect in the notorious rape and murder spree in California.
Kramer then used DNA to do “genetic genealogy” research that cost just $217 and identified Joseph James DeAngelo in 2018.
Unlike Lauro, investigators detained DeAngelo and placed him under suicide watch, Kramer said. DeAngelo continues to serve life in prison.
Kramer and former FBI Special Agent Stephen Busch have since founded California-based Indago, which uses public records, such as birth and marriage certificates, newspaper obituaries, websites, such as newspapers.com and genetic results available on popular genealogy websites — along with special software to process all of the information — to identify suspects such as Lauro.
Kramer and Busch also co-founded the FBI Forensic Genetic Genealogy team.
They helped train FBI special agents in genetic genealogy and currently train investigators from around the country.
Indago was hired to find the real killer by the Hawai‘i Innocence Project on behalf of the three men originally accused of Ireland’s rape and murder.
Because of the work of the Innocence Project, Albert “Ian” Schweitzer, 51, was exonerated in January and immediately released to his family after 23 years in prison. In October his brother Shawn Schweitzer, 48, also was exonerated. The third person who was convicted, Frank Pauline Jr., was killed in a New Mexico prison by a fellow inmate in 2015.
Kramer said after using genealogical research to identify a suspect, FBI and Department of Justice procedures dictate acquiring “surreptitious DNA” to positively prove a link to crimes without tipping off the suspect.
He said investigators from all over the country have been asking him why Big Island police ignored protocol, swabbed Lauro and talked to him for about an hour before letting him go upon his request, only for him to kill himself.
In his work identifying suspects, Kramer called newspaper obituaries “a gold mine” because they identify relatives, dates and other background information.
Newspapers.com proved “to be super useful in the Golden State Killer case,” Kramer said.
Even though Lauro’s DNA was not in criminal databases, relatives had uploaded their genetic profiles to public genealogy websites.
“Just because ‘I don’t want the cops using my DNA,’ it doesn’t matter,” Kramer said. “We’ll find you.”
Based on assumptions about the rough age of Ireland’s killer in 1991 — Lauro was 23 at the time — Kramer began looking at Hawai‘i County birth records and address information and other data to compile a list of possible suspects that included Lauro.
Kramer declined to identify whose online genetic information helped lead to Lauro or how they were related to him.
“But what made this case a lot easier was the family tree DNA,” he said. “It tells the ethnicity of a person, and he (Lauro) was 80 percent Filipino and 20 percent Northern European, meaning three of his grandparents were 100 percent Filipino and another was European.”
Kramer dug into census and marriage data looking for “a European who married into a Filipino family in Hawaii.”
Lauro’s own online information also helped lead to him.
His address showed that Lauro lived less than 2 miles from the crime scene, which provided a big clue, along with Lauro’s Facebook page, in which he talked about fishing and included photos of the Wa‘a Wa‘a fishing trail that looked like Ireland’s crime scene.
“Most criminals take their victims, dead or alive, to a place they’re familiar with,” Kramer said. “He was our top suspect. He’s the one who stuck out.”
Kramer then notified a member of the FBI Forensic Genetic Genealogy team in Honolulu and said, “Hey, this is what I’ve got.”
“The FBI confirmed the genealogy investigation on its own, as well, and arrived at Lauro as the suspect after I gave it to them,” Kramer said.
