Boyfriend held
in stabbing death

A Waipahu woman is found
dead in her home days after
her cousin hears screams

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By Rod Antone
rantone@starbulletin.com

A relative of a slain Waipahu woman said he heard her muffled screams on the last day she was seen alive.

Honolulu police discovered the body of Memory Joy Medina, 30, yesterday at 7:15 a.m. Medina was last heard by relatives arguing with her live-in boyfriend on Sunday.

"I could hear her screaming, and then I could hear her screams being muffled," said Medina's cousin Alan Marcos, who lives on the second floor of the Awalai Street home. "There was a lot of thumping and then one last thump, and then there was silence."

Marcos said he went downstairs to check on Medina and instead talked to her 34-year-old boyfriend, who assured him that nothing had happened.

"He told me I could go into the bathroom to talk to her if I wanted," said Marcos. "I thought everything was OK.

"When he (the boyfriend) left early Monday morning, I just assumed she left with him. This is unreal, shocking."

Police said they received an anonymous call yesterday from a woman who asked them to go to Medina's home and check on her welfare. When officers arrived, the door was closed but not locked, so they entered the home. Medina's body was found in her bathroom.

"She had what appeared to be one stab wound to her neck and several others to her hands," said HPD Homicide Lt. Bill Kato. "They looked like defensive wounds."

Several hours after Medina's body was discovered, police found her boyfriend at a home in Aiea, where they said he was hiding in a closet. He was arrested for suspicion of second-degree murder.

"He didn't resist arrest, but he did try to hide from us," said HPD Homicide Lt. Bill Kato. "We also had to take him to the hospital for some bite wounds."

Kato said Medina's boyfriend had "three human bite marks" -- one on his chest and two on an arm -- but did not say whether they were caused by the victim. So far, police have not recovered a murder weapon.

Marcos said Medina and her boyfriend had been going out for three years and had been living in a smaller home behind his family's main house for the past two months. Before that the couple lived for two years in a room in the main house.

Marcos said both initially had good jobs, Medina as a phlebotomist and her boyfriend as a machinist, and were always having barbecues outside with family and friends. Recently, though, Marcos said, the couple started using crystal methamphetamine, and everything changed.

"Always in the room, only came out to eat, stopped working ... They had good jobs, lots of friends, always taking trips," Marcos said. "They had everything in the world, then they lost it all."

The suspect in this case did not have any prior convictions, according to state records, and police had not charged him in Medina's death as of yesterday evening.