Hawaii is mostly known for its white sandy beaches, fun in the hot sun, and as a holiday mecca for people from all over the world. People come here to get away from the stresses and dangers of the modern world, to rest, relax and put off all their problems for a while.
Nevertheless, sometimes very dark stories happen here, which they try not to tell tourists, and one of which was never revealed.
On the evening of January 20, 1982, 19-year-old Lisa Au, who worked as a hairdresser in Kailua, Oahu, had just finished her job and went outside to watch the pouring downpour. After that, she went to the house of her friend Doug Holmes, where they had a snack, and at about midnight Lisa and Doug parted, got into different cars and Lisa drove to her home.
But Lisa never got home and what happened to her that night forever remained a terrible secret, which over time turned into the most shameful page in the history of the Hawaiian police.
The next day, Lisa's relatives began looking for her and contacted Doug, who said that they broke up around midnight. After that, Doug also went in search of Lisa, who drove around all the surrounding roads in his car.
After hours of searching, Doug found Lisa's car parked on the side of the highway near the Kapaa Quarry Road marker. The girl's car was empty and Doug could see no sign next to it.
When the police arrived at the scene, they found that the car windows were open and that the rain that went on all evening and part of the night flooded the entire interior with water. At the same time, Lisa's wallet was found completely dry, and her driver's license disappeared somewhere.
When the criminologists began to examine the car, it turned out that all the prints inside the car had been carefully erased by someone, and there were no other leads there.
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Given the girl's disappearance, the police suspected the kidnapping. Lisa's wanted ads were posted everywhere and reported on TV, and for the next 10 days, local residents were searched and interviewed throughout the district.
However, no traces of Lisa and the witnesses who saw something suspicious were never found. The police and relatives of the victim began to suspect the worst.
On January 31, 1982, their suspicions were justified when a man jogging on Tantalus Drive in the Makiki region in the morning came across the decaying remains of a human body. More precisely, his dog stumbled upon them.
The body was female and completely naked and was carefully thrust into a narrow crevice in the rock. The police who arrived quickly identified the remains as the body of Lisa Au, but the cause of the girl's death due to severe decomposition was never clarified.
The location of the body was far enough from Lisa's car, so it was decided that a premeditated killer was acting here. However, even then, the police did not have any clues as to who could have killed the girl and why. Nothing was found out about whether her body had traces of sexual abuse.
The police managed to find only a few witnesses who could provide valuable information. One of them said that on the evening of Liza's disappearance he saw another car driving behind her car and it had flashing blue lights like a police flasher. This fact was quickly linked to the disappearance of Lisa's driver's license, and rumors spread around the neighborhood that Lisa could have been killed by one of the police.
The anger of the community was so great that strong pressure was put on the police. People all over the island spoke at spontaneous rallies and demanded to immediately find out which of the police officers was the killer.
When rumors circulated that a maniac policeman was at work, the authorities became agitated and began to involve large resources in trying to figure out the killer from other policemen. Once it seemed that he was finally caught when one of the employees was accused of intrusive molestation of women, but no significant evidence was found against him.
In subsequent years, it turned out that Lisa simply lost her driver's license in the market, which she drove into immediately after saying goodbye to Doug, and the witness who saw the police car following her car most likely simply lied.
Thus, a lot of time and effort was wasted and perhaps this prevented the search for the real killer of the girl. And at the same time, all this almost ruined the life of that very suspected policeman.
It was later revealed that, against the background of the search for the killer policeman, such evidence as fresh scratches on Doug Holmes's face and the fact that he passed a lie detector test with big problems were ignored.
Also, the testimony of one of the eyewitnesses, who saw a man's silhouette on the side of the road in Liza's car, was completely missed and he hung over the woman's body.
In 1983, the exhumation of Lisa Au's body was carried out in order to more thoroughly determine the causes of death and search for evidence on her remains. But the researchers only realized that Lisa's body was buried very hastily and carelessly.
The body was not even washed or removed from dirt and leaves, but was quickly stuffed into a body bag and buried in the ground. It also remained unknown whether it was opened at all. It is very difficult to imagine such negligence in forensic science in a country like the United States, and nevertheless it happened.
For further research, Lisa's skull was taken along with the lower jaw, but these bones suddenly disappeared somewhere and were never found. As if someone did everything so that they would not know anything about Lisa's death.