Unsolved Maui
murder revisited

A project reopening cold cases
includes the 1987 rape-murder
of a religious pilgrim

KIHEI, Maui » Dressed almost always in white, Myrna Siegel traveled on religious adventures to dozens of countries from Central America to the Middle East, despite obstacles and dangers.

COURTESY AURORA SIEGEL Myrna Siegel was a well-educated child of the '60s who converted to Christianity and traveled to biblical sites before settling in Maui.

"If she wasn't supposed to go somewhere, that's where she went," said her daughter, Aurora Siegel, who traveled with her as a child.

Aurora Siegel said the irony is that her mother, known as "Sky Blue," was killed on the low-crime island of Maui.

On the morning of Sept. 16, 1987, the body of 51-year-old Myrna Siegel was found by two fishermen in a beach gully on a vacant lot near the Koa Lagoon condominium in south Maui.

Sheets of gospel music she composed were found near the body.

Police detectives said she had been brutally raped and beaten.

The death of Siegel, who was homeless and camping in a nearby field, did not attract much news media attention, and the investigation hit a dead end.

But with a recent federal grant through the state Attorney General's Office, investigators are working with Maui police to re-examine the cold-case murder of Siegel.

"The case is definitely worthy of a follow-up," said Maui Police Lt. Glenn Cuomo.

Anderson Hee, a special agent with the state Attorney General's Office, said state investigators have been looking at unsolved murders since October and are currently looking at more than 12 homicides referred by each of the four counties, including Siegel's.

"We're going to resolve several of them," he said. "There are several cases that have good leads and evidence."

Hee declined to comment on the "good leads and evidence" at this time.

If you have information Anyone with information about the murder or any other unsolved homicides may call Anderson Hee, a special agent with the state Attorney General's Office in Honolulu, (808) 586-1240, e-mail coldcase@hawaii.gov or call Maui Police Lt. Glenn Cuomo on Maui, (808) 244-6427. The names of tipsters will remain confidential if they wish.

Since 1977, there have been 376 unsolved homicides, leaving surviving family members and friends with unresolved questions.

Aurora Siegel, 34, a manager of restaurants and bars in San Francisco, said she was surprised and pleased with the renewed probe into her mother's murder.

"I would love to see the perpetrator caught," she said. "He deserves to pay for his crimes. That would give me great peace of mind."

She said she had called police a few years ago to find out if anything had been done to find the killer, but was told there had been no new developments.

Siegel said her mother, a vegetarian, was well-educated, strongly spiritual and eccentric.

Raised in a upper-middle-class family most of her teen years in White Plains, N.Y., Myrna Siegel earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.

"She had a 4.0 grade average, Phi Beta Kappa," Aurora Siegel said.

Myrna Siegel was also part of the hippie generation of the 1960s, who took mind-altering drugs and rejected institutional values.

Siegel said her mother, who was from a Jewish family, became a Christian in her late 20s and was motivated to travel on religious pilgrimages to biblical landmarks.

With her parents' financial support, Myrna Siegel traveled to Israel with her daughter.

They later traveled to Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey.

"She read somewhere that the Garden of Eden was in a remote area of Turkey," Siegel said. "We had to go on a donkey into the mountains.... It was not a boring childhood."

Siegel said she and her mother came to Maui in 1981 and were homeless for several years, spending most of their time camping in Honokohau Valley and Hana, then later in Spreckelsville and the backside of Haleakala crater.

A few days before her death, Myrna Siegel visited Aurora, who was then 17 and living with foster parents on Maui.

"She said, 'I didn't come to argue or guilt you. I just wanted to tell you I love you,'" Aurora recalled.

Aurora Siegel said her understanding was that days later, her mother met a woman at a fruit stand in Kihei and was planning to see her again to sit and talk on the beach.

The lady did not make the meeting, she said, and her mother probably waited until it was dark.

"My mother was pretty patient, and willing to continue to wait for people," Siegel said.

Siegel said her mother, at about 5-foot-5, wasn't a big woman, but she also wasn't the type to flee from danger and might have tried to express her religious beliefs to the man who attacked her.

"She was very much about turning the other cheek ... a peaceful person," Siegel said.

After being attacked, her mother probably would have screamed and tried to get away, she said.

"If anybody has any information regarding the crime, their coming forward would mean the world to me," Siegel said. "It would bring me so much relief."

Hee said the name of tipsters will remain confidential if they wish.