Hawaii’s most notorious unsolved crime — the assault and rape of 23-year-old Virginia visitor Dana Ireland, who was left for dead on Christmas Eve 1991 — took an unexpected turn with the suicide last week of a 57-year-old Hawaiian Paradise Park man whose DNA was found in Ireland’s body and at her crime scenes three decades ago.
Ireland died of her injuries at Hilo Medical Center on Christmas Day 1991.
Albert Lauro Jr., who was 23 at the time of Ireland’s murder, lived less than 2 miles from the Wa‘a Wa‘a fishing trail where Ireland’s body was found, and had been living in Paradise Park for the past 32 years since the murder.
While under investigation, Lauro killed himself at his home in Paradise Park’s Kapoho area July 23.
Some time before, an FBI agent from the Honolulu field office and Big Island police officers who had Lauro under surveillance had retrieved the fork from a plate lunch he had just discarded. Hawaii County Police Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz told reporters Monday that DNA from the fork matched DNA from the two Ireland crime scenes.
Lauro was asked to come in for questioning on July 19, when a court-ordered cheek swab was taken. That DNA, once again, linked him to evidence collected in 1991, Moszkowicz said. The interview lasted about an hour until Lauro asked to leave.
He killed himself four days later, Moszkowicz said, but declined to specify how Lauro committed suicide.
Lauro had not been considered a suspect until he was genetically traced in February by Steven Kramer, a retired FBI attorney and federal prosecutor whose previous genetic work solved the “Golden State Killer” serial rapes and murders in California in 2018, said Kenneth Lawson of the nonprofit Hawai‘i Innocence Project.
“Kramer co-founded the FBI Forensic Genetic Genealogy (‘FGG’) team, which now has over 200 FBI members nationwide and his efforts have helped to solve hundreds of FGG cases,” according to a filing in Hilo Circuit Court by Lawson and attorneys representing the original suspects, who are seeking a judge’s order today to preserve all evidence in the Ireland case.
Lauro’s suicide means that Ireland’s family, the families of the three men originally convicted of the crimes and the public at large likely will never know exactly what happened to Ireland and why, Lawson told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser on Monday.
In their filing, the attorneys called the investigation into Lauro “a complete abandonment of best practices and basic fundamental principles of justice. … We urged them repeatedly to get arrest and search warrants to prevent (Lauro) from fleeing, destroying evidence, or killing himself. … If (Lauro) had been taken into custody and put on suicide watch after his DNA was collected, he would still be alive. If (Lauro) was still alive, the circumstances surrounding Ms. Ireland’s murder could have been further investigated and revealed. His apparent suicide has irreparably hampered all interest in Petitioners’ ability to uncover the truth and receive closure after the decades that they served wrongfully convicted of Ms. Ireland’s murder.”
Court records show that Lauro had traffic citations and a civil court case involving a bank — but no criminal history of violence.
Moszkowicz told reporters Monday that Lauro did have a shoplifting arrest in 1987.
Lawson described Lauro as “married with children and grandchildren. How do you tell your grandchildren that ‘a long time ago I raped and murdered someone in the biggest unsolved crime in Hawaii history, and three innocent people went to jail even after my sperm was discovered in her … and on her hospital gurney’?”
Moszkowicz defended his officers’ investigation, saying they had to proceed carefully because the statute of limitations had expired on sexual assault, and they did not have enough probable cause to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Lauro killed Ireland.
There were two crime scenes linked to Ireland’s death: the first where she was struck by a vehicle while riding a bicycle, and a second where her body was discovered that included a “Johnny Z’s” T-shirt soaked in Ireland’s blood that also contained Lauro’s semen, along with “habitual DNA,” meaning Lauro had worn the shirt, Moszkowicz said.
But all of the DNA evidence does not prove on its own that Lauro “knowingly or intentionally killed her,” Moszkowicz said.
Lawson and his colleagues want more information on what Big Island police did to investigate Lauro after they received his name from Kramer.
Lauro’s DNA evidence answers the question of who killed Ireland, Lawson believes, but does not explain the circumstances, including whether she had been targeted or whether her attack, rape and murder was “a crime of opportunity.”
Her death drew national notoriety at the time, in part, because Ireland was a blond and blue-eyed tourist who was killed during the Christmas holiday — allegedly by three Native Hawaiian suspects.
Ireland’s family, the public at large and the families of the three men implicated in her murder — Frank Pauline Jr. and brothers Albert Ian and Shawn Schweitzer — deserve to know how the case was handled over all these years, along with the events surrounding Lauro’s police interview and death, Lawson said.
In a statement Monday, Moszkowicz said, “For 33 years, our Department has been resolute in investigating the Dana Ireland case. … Specifically, DNA was recovered from a swab taken from Ireland’s body, from a sheet used to transport Ireland to the hospital, and from a T-shirt found at the scene. While it was analyzed at the time, there was no match in any DNA database, and the person whose DNA was found at the scene became known as ‘Unknown Male #1.’”
Police said that in 2008 the DNA evidence was sent to the Forensic Analytical Crime Lab in California, “where it remains today, as part of a cooperative agreement with the Innocence Project.”
This month police said they collected “a utensil that he (Lauro) had been using after he discarded it. The DNA from the utensil was analyzed and found to be a match to ‘Unknown Male #1.’”
According to Hawaii County police, “Lauro Jr. was asked to come to the station and talk with investigators. The encounter was consensual, and he was not in police custody at the time. After speaking with investigators, Lauro Jr. asked to leave and was allowed to do so after the court- ordered buccal (cheek) swab was collected. The buccal swab was sent to Forensic Analytical Crime Lab in California along with a request to rush the analysis and return the results as soon as possible. Based on that analysis, the Hawai‘i Police Department can now confirm that the DNA collected at the crime scene matched Lauro Jr., a resident of Hawaiian Paradise Park.”
“The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects individuals from unwarranted search and seizure,” Moszkowicz said in his statement. “In order to obtain a search warrant, investigators would have to have established probable cause for the crime of murder and explained specifically what evidence it was seeking.
“We remain focused on Dana Ireland, a young woman who was brutally murdered. There is still a lot about this case that we do not know and our investigation into this case continues to push forward. Our search for the truth is not over.”
In February, Kramer’s Indago Solutions identified Lauro as “Unknown Male #1” by his distinct ethnicity, which showed three of his grandparents had to be 100% Filipino, along with 20% Scandinavian heritage from the 1700s, Lawson said.
Kramer then contacted the FBI’s genetic genealogy team, which confirmed Indago’s results, according to the plaintiff’s court filing.
Moszkowicz said detectives unlocked Lauro’s cellphone Monday and were interviewing friends and relatives and poring over evidence seized from his home looking for further evidence.
He hopes that the new investigation into Lauro will “guide us into the search of what really happened.”
POLICE SEEK HELP
Anyone with information on the investigation should contact Hawaii Police Department Area I Criminal Investigation Division Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins at 808-961-2251 or via email at Rio.Amon-Wilkins@hawaiicounty.gov.
20240728 Dana Ireland Case Motion by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd
