A recently retired Honolulu police detective last week explained to a jury how the person who slain acupuncturist Jon Tokuhara had exchanged thousands of cellphone messages with was identified.
Eric Thompson, 36, is on trial for the Jan. 12, 2022, murder of Tokuhara, who prosecutors claim shot Tokuhara, 47, to death over an alleged affair with Thompson’s wife.
Retired Detective Michael Ogawa, a trained digital forensics expert who testified at trial Friday, said the day after the murder he was
assigned to extract and analyze the contents of Tokuhara’s two cellphones, and discovered that his iPhone 11 contained 5,610 direct messages with a single Instagram user.
“The context of the messages seemed to show Mr. Tokuhara was involved in
an affair with someone,” said Ogawa.
The messages started June 27, 2021, and ran through July 3, 2021. Instagram direct messages normally show the user name, but these were labeled “unknown user.”
From those messages, which included photos and videos, Ogawa determined the person Tokuhara was apparently having an affair with was someone named Joyce and that her husband’s name was Eric.
Using the Instagram user ID number, software tools gave him the name “Little SqueezeMe.”
“The ‘Little SqueezeMe’ account was connected to JEsentials.com, a commerce website that sells baby products,” Ogawa said.
He ran the company name through the state’s business registration database and learned it was owned by Joyce Thompson.
Ogawa said when he received Tokuhara’s phones on the evening of Jan. 13, 2022, “at that point we had no leads.” He was “looking at anything around the time of the incident.”
He found nothing in the victim’s iPhone 7 Plus. But Tokuhara’s iPhone 11 was last unlocked at 6:15 p.m. on the day he died, and his last outgoing message was at 6:12 p.m.
Tokuhara was killed sometime between 6:12
and 6:20 p.m., according to prosecutors.
Deputy Prosecutor Benjamin Rose said in opening statements that Joyce Thompson had sought fertility treatments from Tokuhara, who owned Tokuhara Acupuncture and Healthcare on Waipahu Depot Street.
Eric Thompson was tied to the crime scene because a white four-door Chevrolet Silverado (2014-16) was visible in nearby video surveillance at about that time. He owned a 2014 Silverado, which was seen leaving his Wailupe residence before and after the shooting. Police ran a check of 53 registered Silverados, and Thompson was the only owner found who was associated with Tokuhara, Rose said.
David Hayakawa, Thompson’s lawyer, in his opening statement accused the prosecution of focusing on one suspect and failing to investigate other possibilities.
During cross-examination of Ogawa, he asked why there was no chain of custody form, which is police policy, for Tokuhara’s phones. Ogawa said Detective David Takaki handed him the phones and that he returned them to the lead detective.
“You’d be stunned to learn that that phone was not logged into custody until a year afterward,” he said.
Hayakawa asked whether the reason Joyce Thompson’s Instagram name said “unknown user” was because she had blocked Tokuhara previously.
Ogawa said, “That’s one explanation.”
Hayakawa also asked whether he saw the 2,500 Instagram messages with another woman. “I may have seen that,” he said.
Ogawa’s report showed he also examined the cellphone belonging to Daryl Fujita, the recent ex-boyfriend of Tokuhara’s girlfriend Andrea Irimata.
Hayakawa also asked about some activity with the phone, plug-ins before the data extraction at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 13, 2022, and a phone call from a “Reggie” that went to voicemail at 1:15 p.m.
Lilly Tokuhara was the last to exchange texts with her son about whether he was coming for dinner or just wanted it to go. At 5:43 p.m. she asked whether he wanted her to pack dinner for his girlfriend and him. He replied at 6:12 p.m., “Just me.”
But he never came, she said.
She was the first to discover his body the next morning.
Dr. Jon Gates, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, said Tokuhara did not die immediately.
He found four entrance gunshot wounds to Tokuhara’s head and face, two from the right and two from the left, but no exit wounds. He found fragments of the .22-caliber bullets. One traveled into the spinal bone.
On Thursday, jewelry and watch repair store owner Luisito Concepcion testified that his shop and Tokuhara’s clinic share a wall. But he was listening to loud music on his Bluetooth device, as he always does, on the night of the shooting and could not hear any loud noises.
He was working in his shop alone from 6:10 p.m. till he left at 8:10 p.m. He said Tokuhara’s truck was still parked in the lot. The back door to the shop was closed.
Police officer John Mintern was the first on the scene the morning of Jan. 13, 2022, after Tokuhara’s mother discovered the body. He said Lilly Tokuhara was “extremely emotional and distraught, crying, a lot of wailing,” as she sat in her car.
Mintern said the glass and metal screen doors were open when he arrived.
He said there were frequent homeless complaints in the area and that there is an illegal gambling room across the street in the area of the old Arakawa Store.
Trial resumes today.
