Kauai cops unsure
if rapist-killer already
in jail, but crimes stopped

By Anthony Sommer
Kauai correspondent

LIHUE >> One year after the first of three vicious sexual assaults that left two West Kauai women dead and another severely maimed, the Kauai Police Department says there is a problem in solving the crimes.

The Police Department continues to stress it has no evidence to prove it, but it appears likely that one man was responsible for all three crimes and is already behind bars on a parole violation.

A year ago today, the body of Lisa Bissell, 38, was found in a ditch near Polihale, raped, beaten and stabbed.

On May 22 a 52-year-old woman caring for a remote beach-front home near Kekaha was raped, beaten, stabbed and apparently left for dead.

On Aug. 30 the body of Daren Singer, 39, of Maui was found at her campsite at Pakala Beach. She had been raped, beaten and stabbed.

Shortly afterward, Kauai police arrested a convicted rapist on a parole violation. The Police Department denied the arrest had anything to do with the three attacks, but they have since conceded the man was among their top suspects.

The man had been on parole since January 1999 for a 1982 rape on Oahu that involved a brutal beating.

After being arrested last year for the parole violation, the state parole board revoked his parole and sent him back to prison for five years.

Police officials continue to insist the man was arrested solely for violating the conditions of his parole, but police sources say Kauai detectives, determined to get him off the streets because they believed he was likely the attacker, shadowed him and watched for parole violations as minor as missing curfew.

After his arrest, the crimes stopped, and West Kauai women stopped calling the Kauai Police Department demanding action.

The attacks shocked the small island, where there had been no murders for almost three years. The Police Department did not even have any detectives specializing in homicide investigations because, until the attacks last year, there had not been a need for one.

Dr. Carol Marsh, a Kauai psychologist, said the West Kauai women most terrified "were predisposed to anxiety and lived near the beach or the area of the murders.

"They were afraid to leave their homes. They would only go out when somebody else was with them. They had exaggerated fear of strangers, and they had nightmares," Marsh said.

Kauai police Chief George Freitas said detectives were frustrated at every turn.

The second victim, who survived but whose vision was impaired by the beating, was unable to identify any of the suspects. But she did provide a description used by a police artist to create a widely circulated drawing.

Kauai did not have an ongoing contract with any laboratories to analyze DNA evidence. What was promised by the private lab hired to do the work as a six-week process ended up taking more than six months, according to Inspector Mel Morris, head of the Investigations Bureau.

When the test results arrived -- one sample still is being processed -- the results were "inconclusive."

A $25,000 reward failed to bring forward anyone with knowledge of the crimes.

"We still have stuff going on this case," Freitas said. "We have more than just a feeling that there is a person or persons out there who know something but who aren't coming forward."

Does the chief believe their man already is in prison?

"I don't have anything to say about that," Freitas responded.