Rapist’s parole LIHUE >> A one-page flier with the name and photographs of a Kauai man are being circulated quietly and anonymously to women all over the island.
hearing draws
attention on Kauai
Police sources say he is a suspect
in the brutal attacks of 2000By Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.comThe flier says little about the man except that he is 42, formerly lived on the west side of Kauai and is a convicted sex offender. It clearly is a photocopy from the Hawaii sex-offender registry. The message included on the flier is, "He may be out very soon." The man's parole hearing is, in fact, scheduled for Monday at Halawa Correctional Facility.
According to police sources, he is a primary suspect in a series of brutal attacks on women in West Kauai in the spring and summer of 2000. Two women were killed, another severely injured.
The attacks changed the lives of virtually every woman on Kauai. Women who formerly jogged or hiked alone now either do so with a group of friends or not at all. Women who never locked their doors bought deadbolts. Pepper spray, which is illegal on Kauai without a police permit, was quietly smuggled in by women traveling to other islands.
According to state Department of Public Safety records, the man was sentenced to prison on Aug. 23, 1993, for a brutal rape on Oahu. His sentence will be completed in October 2007, but he was paroled to Kauai on Jan. 5, 1999.
The first of the attacks was in early April 2000. The last of the three attacks was in late August 2000. The similarity among the three crimes leads police to believe they were the work of the same man: All the attacks were on the west side of Kauai, and all the victims were middle-aged women.
On April 7, 2000, the body of Lisa Bissell, 38, of Hanapepe was found in a ditch near Polihale State Park. She had been raped, severely beaten and stabbed. Police sources said her throat was cut. Police sources also said her belongings were found along a road in Waimea, indicating she was abducted there.
On May 22 a 52-year-old woman was beaten and stabbed in the yard of a Kekaha home where she was employed as a yard worker.
In an interview with the Star-Bulletin, the woman said her attacker approached her and said, "My name is John and I'm homeless." She said she suggested he go to the home next door where the owners often let transients camp on their property.
She said when she turned her back on the man and went back to work, he picked her up from behind and took her behind the house, where he beat her, breaking one of her arms.
She said he pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the chest but that the knife hit her breastbone and was bent. The man threw the knife into some nearby bushes. She said she believes that was the only reason her throat was not cut.
The woman said it took her more than three hours to crawl to a telephone to call for help. Months later, she was flown to Honolulu from the mainland and shown a lineup.
She said two of the men in the lineup were not the man and were eliminated, but she was unable to pick out her attacker from those remaining.
On Aug. 30, the body of Daren Singer, 43, of Maui was found at a remote site near Pakala Point Beach. She had been raped, beaten and stabbed. Police sources said her face had been beaten almost beyond recognition and her throat cut.
Two weeks later, the man was arrested by Kauai police on a warrant issued by the state Parole Department for three technical violations of his parole terms.
The Kauai Police Department never has identified, on the record, the man as a suspect in the three attacks.
"I'm not going to say he is a suspect," Kauai police Chief George Freitas said this week.
Freitas said neither Kauai police nor prosecutors plan to attend Monday's parole board hearing because the man never has been accused of any crime on Kauai.
But, privately, numerous police sources have said the man is their No. 1 suspect. Sources have said KPD detectives shadowed the man to catch him in technical violations of his parole so they could get him behind bars as quickly as possible.
Publicly, the KPD has said tests of the main evidence they collected, DNA samples, were inconclusive. Despite a reward offer and pleas to the public, no witnesses have come forward.
Numerous police sources have said that if the man committed the crimes, it is unlikely anyone will talk to police about him. The suspect has a relative who is a former KPD officer, and police guarantees of anonymity, no matter how well intended, are not trusted, they said.
The man was sent back to prison on three parole violation charges: that he had contact with a woman acquaintance he was forbidden in his parole agreement to see, that he visited family on Oahu without notifying his parole officer and that he failed to give his parole officer a description of a car he was driving.
Tommy Johnson, parole board administrator, said he has not been informed that prosecutors from Honolulu or the victim of the rape on Oahu nearly 20 years ago have indicated they will appear at Monday's hearing. There also has been no indication the man will be represented by an attorney, he said.
The board will either set the man free or set a future date for another hearing, Johnson said.