Honolulu is a city with a small town spirit. Everyone knows each other and when something happens within the community you're unlikely to find someone who hasn't caught wind of the situation one way or another. This dynamic became especially apparent when the corpse of a woman by the name of Lisa Au was discovered in the mountainous area of Tantalus drive. Something, especially shocking to locals given that it's something you don't see every day. To many, this seemed like a story more likely to come out of the US mainland and as such the case created panic throughout the city and the entire island for that matter. What made the situation even worse was the public's certainty that a policemen had somehow been involved in Lisa's slaying.
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| image: hawaiinewsnow.com |
Before we get into that, though we'll have to start at the beginning. The last night Lisa Au was seen alive. In 1982, Lisa Au was just 19 years old and employed as a hair dresser in her hometown of Kailua, on Oahu's east side. Anyone looking in from the outside would assume that all was going well for her. On top of being employed, Lisa was also dating. Her boyfriend, a University of Hawaii student by the name of Doug Holmes. On the night of January 20th, Lisa and Doug planned to meet up, specifically at Doug's sister's apartment in the town of Makiki. At 9:45 PM, Lisa wrapped up at the Kailua salon and set out, first making a brief stop at a grocery store to pick up snacks for the gathering before continuing to our destination, which she reached shortly there after. By 12:20 AM the gathering disbanded and the meeting being oddly brief for reasons we'll speculate on shortly. Lisa is now on her way back to Kailua while Doug was on his way back to his UH dorm room or at least that was the plan.
Lisa never made it back to Kailua. In fact, her roommate happened to still be up that night expecting to see Lisa back. And when she failed to show up the roommate began to worry. Both the authorities and Lisa's parents were contacted. And by the next morning, the Au family had gotten in touch with Lisa's boyfriend to ask him what was going on after all, he was the person to see their daughter.
Doug claimed to know nothing and volunteered to be the first to go out and search for his now a missing girlfriend. The obvious place to start would be Lisa's side of the island. And that's where Doug happened upon a disturbing discovery. Lisa's car was abandoned on the side of the road and was described as having a window partially rolled down with the interior soaking wet. Lisa's purse was located in one of the seats which wasn't something most would expect to find. Surely, Lisa would have taken it with her if she'd gone somewhere else. And if this was some kind of robbery, well, then it still probably would not have been there. The only thing of note that was missing was Lisa's ID card.
Following this disturbing discovery, the entire Island of Oahu would come to know Lisa's name. Posters and flyers replaced just about everywhere. And everyone had their eyes peeled, but as the days went by the picture began to grow more and more grim. How does someone go missing on an Island where everyone is looking for you! In the event that said person isn't found immediately then you can begin to assume the worst. And that's unfortunately, exactly what happened here. On January 31st, roughly 10 days after Lisa disappeared her nude corpse was located by a man walking his dog along Tantalus drive. For context Tantalus is up in the mountains and heavily wooded not to mention pitch black at night. This isn't the kind of place Lisa would have ended up at by mistake, especially considering the fact that it was completely off course from her route and miles away from whereher car was discovered.
Now, as I said, a second ago Lisa's disappearance was already alarming enough but the fact that she'd been murdered and her body abandoned sent shock waves throughout the local community. To make matters even worse they were locked to speculate since there were barely any answers coming from up top due to varying factors, including decomposition, Lisa's cause of death couldn't even be determined and to this day still remains a mystery.
Her abandoned car wasn't much help either as far as forensics went. There was close to nothing to work with. The best anyone could do wasrely on witnesses and tips. And as people began to come forward a horrifying theory would dominate the narrative surrounding this case. People began to talk and rumors began to spread based on a few testimonies where residents of the Island claim to have been harassed or attacked by people who appeared to be police officers. Now, what do I mean by that? At the time HPD had been using a number of unmarked police cars, only identifiable via bluelights mounted on their grills.
