Whatever
Happened To...
An update on past news
Police hopeful new
interviews turn up
leads in Hilo shootingQuestion: What ever happened to the case of Kallen Agliam, the 19-year-old man found shot to death north of Hilo in 2001?
Answer: Agliam, clothed only in shorts and jogging shoes, was found dead of a single gunshot wound in the chest on Jan. 31, 2001, on a side road in Pepeekeo.
Police received word he was to meet two men between 4 and 5 p.m. that day. His body was found at 5:17 p.m. The case remains unsolved.
This April, Agliam's sister Loren wrote to police Capt. Samuel Thomas that the case had been assigned to a series of five detectives without results.
"This is getting ridiculous! With every new detective, the murderer is getting farther and farther away," she wrote.
Thomas told the Star-Bulletin that some changes were unavoidable, such as when detectives were transferred, but he recognized that a better system was needed.
Previously, all nine detectives in the East Hawaii area handling homicides investigated new cases. One also investigated all old, "cold," cases which were still considered solvable, including the Agliam slaying. Thomas restructured assignments so that all nine detectives each had one major cold case on which they could focus.
All of these cold cases have leads to be explored that could bring a solution, he said.
In the Agliam investigation, the detective assigned to it interviewed a person related to the case just a week and a half before Loren's letter, Thomas said.
Loren responded, "The fact that more information came in, that was positive. I just have to be positive with whatever changes they make."
This update was written by Rod Thompson.
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