At her mother's home full of photos of Kahealani Indreginal, Tanya Guidry talked yesterday about the killing of her half sister. Guidry carried her baby Emerald, fathered by Christopher Aki, Kahea-lani's convicted killer.
Slain girl’s sister
caught in family tensionKahealani's half sister criticizes
HPD for its murder investigation
Almost five months after her half sister was found beaten to death near a hiking trail in Keaiwa Heiau State Park, Tanya Guidry gave birth to a baby girl with shining brown eyes named Emerald.
Emerald's father, brown-eyed Christopher Aki, 21, was convicted Wednesday of reckless manslaughter in the death of Guidry's half sister, 11-year-old Kahealani Indreginal, on Dec. 10, 2002.
Aki and Guidry have another child together, Ezra, who is now about 2 years old.
"I am the center of all the tension," said Guidry, 20, yesterday as she sat in the living room of her mother's home in the Puuwai Momi housing complex in Halawa. "I am her sister and he was my boyfriend."
"In my heart, I don't believe he actually did it. But still, if he hadn't taken her there (to the park), she would still be alive. She was in his hands. He was responsible," she said.
Guidry's hardest criticism was for police investigators.
"They really screwed up," she said with tears glassing her eyes.
"At one point I even started my own hunt," Guidry said. "They didn't secure the scene. They didn't collect enough evidence at the scene. I walked there the day after (the body was found), and I laid down and cried. There was nothing. No one stopped me."
She said she did not think lost evidence would have acquitted Aki, as his defense argued. But she said she thought it would have found Kahealani's killers.
Guidry said she wanted the jury to convict Aki for second-degree murder. "But it's not the jury's fault. It's the police. If they had more solid evidence, the jury would have had more proof to decide on.
"Everyone thinks I favor him. I think he was responsible, but I don't think he did it alone. There were others. Chris was too weak (to do it alone)."
Guidry, 20, recently married Seth Ryan Guidry, 21, a Navy sailor whom she met through friends shortly after her sister's death. Guidry said she has shed her childhood memories and potential family life with Aki.
"It's not my life no more, and I don't care. I don't need to worry 'bout him no more," she said.
But she said Aki's mother, Patricia, "wants to get my two babies." She said Emerald's birth certificate did not have Aki's name on it and that recently Aki and his mother successfully asked a family court judge to change that.
Patricia Aki could not be reached for comment.
Behind the high-profile trial of Aki is a domestic fight between families. In late March, Patricia Aki was granted a temporary restraining order barring the Indreginal family and particularly Lehua Tumbaga, the mother of the slain girl and of Guidry, from contacting or threatening her.
Yesterday, Tumbaga declined to talk because she is concerned about the restraining order and any custody fights with Aki over her grandchildren.
Guidry said she is pleased the jury found Aki guilty of manslaughter, even though it carries a lesser sentence than second-degree murder. While second-degree murder is punishable by life in prison with the possibility of parole, Aki is now facing a maximum of 20 years. However, if he is sentenced as a youthful offender, he could be eligible for probation or serve seven years.
"If he were let off, I would be mad. Good they gave him something," said Guidry, adding: "He'll get killed in prison. That's what I hear."
Yesterday, Guidry sat in her mother's living room, which has been converted into a shrine to Kahealani with lei-draped photographs, candles, dolls and stuffed animals, tiny Christmas lights and hand-sewn Hawaiian quilts and pillows. The shrine shrinks the cinder-block living quarters for the surviving seven children of Kahealani's parents, Tumbaga and Vincent Indreginal.
"People come in here and look and say, 'Oh my God,'" said Guidry, scanning the room.
Nearby, her new husband and her two children took an afternoon nap on a mattress in the humid dark of the apartment.
Guidry said Kahealani was "very strong, very feisty." She said that in family wrestling matches with Aki, Kahea "could pin him down like ease."
She also said that Kahealani could bench-press 25 pounds more than Aki.
"He was weak. I could beat him. And she was almost his height," said Guidry.
She took a deep breath and said: "I think he took her to the park. There were others waiting there. They did the job."
Aki's public defender, Todd Eddins, contends that Aki felt he was responsible for the girl's murder because he took her to the park. But Aki testified that others killed her.
Aki confessed to killing Kahealani by beating her with a pipe. But he recanted his confession and said that her uncle Dennis Cacatian was the real killer.
At trial, Aki said that Kahealani told him that her uncle was touching her inappropriately. He said he took her to a parking lot at the park to confront Cacatian.
He alleged that Cacatian, a convicted sex offender who lived near the Indreginal family, became enraged at the accusations and took the girl down a trail and killed her.
"That's junk," said Guidry yesterday. "I don't believe that. My Uncle Dennis wouldn't do that. He says that Chris was just pointing fingers so the jury confused and he get off."
Guidry said she is on good terms with her uncle.
Her mother's other brother, Eldefonso Guzman Cacatian Jr., 47, was subpoenaed to testify at Aki's trial. Defense documents filed in the case alleged that he would testify that his brother had told him he had killed the young girl. But before he was scheduled to testify, Cacatian overdosed on drugs and fell into a coma. He died Saturday.
Guidry said her uncle had a drug problem and that she did not believe what he said about Dennis Cacatian.
"It's junk," she said.
