The city Medical Examiner's Office has identified the 40-year-old man who hanged himself last month in his garage at a Ko Olina home as Yvon Corbiere, who was a former part-owner of a California drilling company.

Police initially suspected the deaths of Corbiere and a 36-year-old woman, whose decomposed body was found Nov. 21 in the living room, to be a murder-suicide.

The Medical Examiner's Office has not yet identified the woman, and has deferred the cause and manner of her death.

Homicide Lt. Bill Kato said police are awaiting the final autopsy report, and have not ruled the woman's death as a murder.

A woman who identified herself as a former employee of C&C Drilling, a Van Nuys, Calif., company that is no longer in business, said the dead woman is his third wife, Adriana.

But what happened and why puzzles the woman.

“;It's a mystery to me,”; said the former employee, who asked not to be named. “;He didn't leave a note. I heard from his employer (in Hawaii). We had gotten rumors over here by the guy who found him.”;

“;He (Corbiere) was a very good person,”; she said. “;Everybody who knew him loved him. This came way out of nowhere. I wouldn't have seen anything like this coming.”;

Corbiere was well respected in the drilling community, she said.

He was part owner of C&C Drilling along with his second wife, Saree, she said.

Corbiere, who was originally from Canada, specialized in environmental and geotechnical drilling, she said.