[ EUGENE BARRETT / 1931-2003 ]
Man killed 3
Honolulu women
over 36-year period
Eugene Walter Barrett's life was defined by the brutal deaths of the women in his life.
Over a 36-year-period that began in 1959, Barrett murdered three Honolulu women who had come to know and trust him -- twice they were girlfriends and one was his ex-wife. He left at least seven children without their mothers.
Barrett died Nov. 8 at age 72. He was born in 1931.
Barrett's first victim was Annie Philips, his lover who had five children with a merchant seaman. Barrett, 27 years old at the time, shot Philips six times in her Desha Lane apartment and received a 50-year prison term, of which he served eight.
In 1972 he stabbed his 25-year-old ex-wife Roberta in the chest with a kitchen knife in the courtyard of a Cooke Street hotel.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served only three years of his 10-year prison sentence.
And just eight years ago, when he was 65, Barrett gunned down his 41-year-old neighbor, Roxanne Kastner, with whom he had been having an affair, in her Kinau Street apartment.
Kastner's 7-year-old son was playing outside when the murder occurred, and testified in court that he heard the gunshots that killed his mother. Barrett received a life sentence for the 1995 crime.
Before he died last month at Pali Momi Medical Center, Barrett had spent a total of 19 years in prison.
"We're just trying to put this behind us," said Teia Pahia, Barrett's daughter-in-law.
Her husband, Bert Pahia, was the son of Roberta and Eugene Barrett.
Teia Pahia said she had spoken to her father-in-law over the telephone and written to him several times in her quest to map out her husband's family genealogy.
"Despite his crimes, he sounded like a really normal man," she said.
Bert Pahia, she said, "really hates him because his whole life was changed over the experience."
"Knowing his crimes, it's very hard," she said.
But, she added, "I have respect for the man because, if not for him, I wouldn't have my husband and my children."
After the 1995 slaying, Barrett was sent to a prison in Oklahoma.
He returned to Hawaii this year, where he served some time at Halawa Correctional Facility until falling ill and being taken to Pali Momi.
Bert Pahia did not talk to his father after his mother's murder and allowed him to have no contact with his grandchildren.
"I sent pictures," said Teia Pahia. "He knew that he would never know his son or his grandsons because that was his son's wishes. Seeing the picture made his life a hell."
A memorial for Barrett will be held Monday afternoon at Borthwick Mortuary.
Besides Bert Pahia, Barrett is survived by mother Emily, brothers Arthur A. and Howard, and five grandchildren.