ASSOCIATED PRESS A court officer prepared to lock ankle cuffs on defendant Scott Davenport shortly after a guilty verdict was announced at Suffolk Superior Court in Boston yesterday.

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Harvard Square victim’s
kin to speak at
court sentencing

A jury finds four men
guilty of murdering a
former Maui woman

BOSTON » The family of a 21-year-old former Maui woman is expected to make a statement in court today at the sentencing of three gang members and a heroin addict convicted of stabbing and beating her to death, said Suffolk County District Attorney spokesman David Procopio.

COURTESY SUFFOLK COUNTY D.A. Four men were found guilty in the beating death of former Maui resident Io Nachtwey, shown in this 2001 family photo.

Despite more than six weeks of sometimes conflicting testimony, the jury in Suffolk Superior Court deliberated for less than a day yesterday before finding Ismael Vasquez, 27; his 23-year-old brother Luis; Harold Parker, 31; and Scott Davenport, 31, guilty of first-degree murder.

Parker and the Vasquez brothers were also convicted of kidnapping Io Nachtwey, a recent arrival from Hawaii who hung around Harvard Square with other young homeless people. The kidnapping charge against Davenport was dropped earlier yesterday.

Luis Vasquez was also convicted of rape. All four face mandatory life terms.

Friends who knew Nachtwey on Maui said they were pleased that the men were convicted.

"I'm glad that they were brought to justice," said Sheri Akuna, a library technician at the state Makawao Library. "At least it's closure for the family."

Nachtwey, a 1999 graduate of King Kekaulike High School who was voted "best female dancer" in her senior year, attended Maui Community College before moving to the mainland.

Akuna said Nachtwey worked for about a year and a half at the library ending 1999 and had "big dreams" of working as a flight attendant for an airline and becoming a foreign language interpreter.

Makawao Library branch manager Carla Mauri said Nachtwey was "very smart" and she and the rest of her family, including several brothers and sisters, actively borrowed a lot of books.

After the verdict in Boston, Prosecutor Patrick Haggan said: "Io Nachtwey was the ultimate innocent victim. She was known on the streets of Harvard Square as someone who didn't belong. She was described as an angel, like a child. She was brutally murdered."

Defense attorneys said they would appeal and criticized the jury for deliberating for just five hours after weeks of testimony.

The Vasquez brothers and Parker were the leaders of a fledging gang that Nachtwey and her friends had been recruited to join. Davenport was a heroin addict who was along for the ride because the other three defendants could get him drugs, his attorney said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS As a guilty verdict was read, Ismael Vasquez, left, Harold Parker, center, and Luis Vasquez, right, stood in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston yesterday. The men were found guilty of murder yesterday in the 2001 gang-related stabbing and beating death of a 21-year-old former Maui woman who hung around Harvard Square.

She first tried to jump from the moving car and then agreed to have sex with Luis Vasquez, the gang leader, in the desperate hope that he'd protect her, he said.

But the men had already decided to kill her, Haggan said.

"This was a cowardly, vicious and senseless murder and each and every one of the defendants wanted it to happen or chose to allow it to happen," Haggan said.

Key witnesses for the prosecution included two 21-year-old women, Ana White and Lauren Alleyne, who avoided life in prison by pleading guilty to manslaughter and agreeing to testify against the four others.

They were each sentenced to 12 years in prison, and with time served are due to get out around 2010.

The women said Davenport stabbed Nachtwey a dozen times as Alleyne held her down and White held her hand over Nachtwey's mouth to stifle her screams. Then, they said, Luis Vasquez cracked nunchucks on her skull to silence her, and her body was rolled into the Charles River.

On Maui, Mauri said it was like Nachtwey to resist entering into a life of crime and defy those leaders. "That's Io. When she has a point of view, she sticks to it," Mauri said.

Mauri and Akuna said Nachtwey was also very sensitive. "She had a very sweet and trusting nature and you don't see that often to the extent Io had it," Akuna said.

Akuna said when Io stopped by the library to say goodbye to them because she was moving to Boston to be with her sister who was attending college, her friends "had some concerns for her."

"It's one thing being on Maui and being very trusting and everything. We're talking about going to the mainland and going to the big city," Akuna said.