There are parole hearings inside Halawa Correctional facility almost every week. Except for family members of the prisoners, and sometimes victims’ families impacted by the convict in question, these hearings generate little or no interest on Kaua’i. But today’s hearing,
There are parole hearings inside Halawa Correctional facility almost every week.
Except for family members of the prisoners, and sometimes victims’ families impacted by the convict in question, these hearings generate little or no interest on Kaua’i.
But today’s hearing, for a 42-year-old man who had previously been convicted of rape, has caused a stir on the island.
A one-page flier featuring two snapshots of the criminal, is warning citizens of the man’s potential release.
The convicted rapist is in the spotlight because many high-ranking Kaua’i police and detectives consider him a serious suspect in the three brutal rape-stabbings which resulted in two deaths and a near-death on West Kaua’i during the spring and summer of 2000.
And despite there never having been an on-the-record statement to that effect by anyone in authority at KPD, including Chief George Freitas, enough reporters and other citizens have been told about this suspect, that an anonymous flyer was circulated last week.
The man was identified on an Oahu television newscast in September of 2000, when he was first brought in for questioning as a primary suspect in the killings.
Local police and prosecutors never could agree on whether there was enough evidence to charge the man with murder.
And the sole surviving victim of the attacks failed to identify the convicted rapist in a police lineup on Oahu in late 2000, as the man who stabbed and raped her and left her for dead.
But the man was re-arrested on a parole violation in the fall of 2000 and sent back to prison.
If he is forced to serve his complete sentence, he would be behind bars for another five years.
Monday’s parole hearing is his first since he was re-arrested in late 2000.
The murders have stopped since he was re-offended for the parole violation.
The West side killings frightened many women all over Kaua’i, especially on the West Side where all three brutally violent assaults took place.
In early April of 2000, Lisa Bissell, 38, was found stabbed to death. Her beaten and raped body was dumped near Polihale State Park.
In late May a 52-year old woman, who survived the brutal attack, was also raped, stabbed and beaten.
The third, and so far last victim, 43-year-old Daren Singer of Maui, was found dead on a remote beachsite on the West Side where she had been camping.
She too had been beaten, raped and stabbed.
All three women were small, middle-aged Caucasians.
Investigators said at the time of the crimes that the suspect’s m.o. (modus operandi) was similar in all three attacks.
The description and a composite drawing released by KPD after the second attack’s survivor was interviewed, identified the assailant as a stocky, local looking man with a dark complexion.
The convicted sex offender whose parole hearing is today fits that general description.
