May 11, 1998

After three weeks of intense scrutiny, Big Island detectives trying to learn what happened to Peter Kema Jr. have found their investigation stalled.

The person who reported the child missing — his mother, Jaylin Kema — refuses to answer police questions unless her attorney is present. Her husband, Peter Kema Sr., has taken that position as well.

Their son, a 7-year-old who was the victim of child abuse, hasn’t been seen by relatives in more than a year. Some of them fear he is dead.

Legal experts say unless more information surfaces, police and prosecutors have few, if any, options.

Peter Kema Sr. told police that he traveled from Hilo to Oahu last August. He brought his son, known as Peter Boy, and the pair lived in a tent at Aala Park. When he ran out of money, Kema said, he gave away the child to a family friend — Auntie Rose Makuakane. Police have been unable to prove that Auntie Rose exists.

Without any evidence of foul play, Peter Boy’s disappearance has to be treated as a missing-persons case, police said. Neither parent is considered a suspect, police said, and the boy’s father has publicly denied harming him. But their new rules for cooperation complicate a case that has very few facts.

“This is a unique situation where we have a missing-person case and a child is missing, and the parents, who claim they are concerned for his welfare, will not speak to us without their attorneys present,” said Big Island police Capt. Morton Carter.

Carter said police hope to interview the couple this week on a variety of issues, none of which he would discuss.

Criminal defense attorney Brook Hart said detectives investigating the case have suspicion and innuendo, but nothing more.

“So unless the police can find some shortcoming or deviation from whatever the parents have told them — to show they lied — they don’t have probable cause to arrest anyone, let alone have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to show that someone murdered the child,” said Hart, a former public defender.

Without some sort of break in the case, authorities are stymied, he said.

“They don’t have any proof the parents aren’t telling the truth,” Hart said.

And granting one parent immunity from prosecution would be a risky solution. “The government would be guessing who they want to give immunity to, and they could guess wrong,” he said.

Reinette Cooper, a Maui County deputy public defender and former deputy prosecutor in Honolulu, said investigators could ask Peter Kema Sr. to take a polygraph test. Or prosecutors could ask to have an investigative grand jury review the evidence.

But Cooper cautioned against police taking too firm a stance in the investigation.

“The more they dig in, the more they scare people into not wanting to cooperate,” Cooper said. “That is probably why they ran to attorneys.”

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, said Howard K.K. Luke, a defense attorney and a former Honolulu deputy prosecutor.

“It is not a slogan or a cliche,” Luke said. “It is a principle of our American legal system. Frequently, in many, many cases, after the facts are known, the person who may appear to be a suspect is in fact truly innocent.”

The Kema case has reminded some of the disappearance of Diane Suzuki, a 19-year-old University of Hawaii student who vanished from an Aiea dance studio in July 1985. Her body was never found.

In 1993 and 1994, Honolulu’s then-Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro subpoenaed 30 to 50 witnesses to testify before an investigative grand jury in the Suzuki case. No one was indicted.

Kaneshiro, now the state’s director of public safety, said there was just too little to go on. “We made a lot of attempts to get evidence,” he said. Without evidence that Suzuki was dead, prosecutors could not move forward.

That is not always the case. In 1988, prosecutors charged Pearl Harbor sailor Michael Catell with killing his wife, Marialyse. Although her body was never found, neighbors who heard an argument and gunshots in the couple’s apartment helped provide enough circumstantial evidence for a conviction.

Sometimes the best strategy in an investigation is patience.

Kaneshiro recalled the case of a woman killed at Ala Moana Center in July 1979. The investigation reached a standstill, and for a long time nothing happened. Then the killer broke up with his girlfriend, and she came forward to help indict him.

Kaneshiro said that while the public wants quick justice, that isn’t always possible.

In “a majority of the cases, you have to investigate right away,” he said. “But when you come to a point where there are a lot of obstacles, you have to wait for evidence to develop.”

Sept. 6, 1998

The questions are not asked as often as they were in April, when Big Island residents first heard about Peter Kema Jr., a missing 7-year-old child abuse victim from Hilo.

But the answers are no different five months later:

His fate is unknown, his whereabouts a mystery. There have been no arrests, no break in the case and no one has been held accountable for a child who has vanished.

Frustration over what has happened — and what has not — simmers just below the surface for those familiar with the case. What happens next, though, does not hinge upon finding Peter Boy, dead or alive.

“There are cases on record where prosecution has moved forward when bodies were not in fact recovered,” said Big Island police Capt. Morton Carter. “But to speak of things in this tense would mean that we are already looking at the child as being dead, and I am not prepared to comment on that at this time.

“I don’t want to lead anyone to think that we have decided the child has met with some foul play,” he said. “We haven’t determined that yet.”

Relatives say they have not seen Peter Boy since February 1997. Some fear he is dead, while others are skeptical of the explanation given by his father, Peter Kema Sr.

Kema says he gave his son to an old family friend named Auntie Rose Makuakane whom he met while job-hunting on Oahu in August 1997. Because he was living in Aala Park and running out of money, Kema says, he thought Makuakane would give his son a better home.

Neither he, nor his wife, Jaylin, have heard from Makuakane, and police have been unable to prove the woman exists. Police classified this as a missing person investigation after officers, and a Child Protective Services social worker, persuaded Jaylin Kema to file a report last January.

Carter has promised several times this summer that his detectives will continue to pursue the truth, that “we are not going to go away.”

But the task has been difficult. Almost immediately after Peter Boy’s story became front-page news, his parents heeded the advice of their attorneys and stopped talking to police, slowing the investigation.

“There is no communication,” Carter said. “I think we have to go back and remember that the reporting person in this missing person case was Jaylin Kema. And at this stage, we cannot speak to her, nor to her husband, regarding the disappearance of their child.

“I think that kind of says it all.”

Perhaps their best option, barring an unforeseen break in the case, is an investigative grand jury, Carter said.

“We’re not at the point where we are prepared to go to an investigative grand jury,” Carter said. “If it was determined that the investigation led us in that direction, the final decision to convene the investigative grand jury would be made by the office of the prosecuting attorney.”

Such a jury would be able to question the Kemas.

The Hawaii County prosecutors office would not comment on the Kema case, despite repeated calls to its Hilo staff. But their efforts, and those of the police, have the support of Big Island Mayor Stephen Yamashiro.

“I have the utmost confidence they are doing everything in their power to solve this situation,” Yamashiro said. “Nobody likes to see something like this happen, where a young man disappears without any reasonable explanation for his disappearance. To second-guess what the police are doing now is counterproductive.”

He called questions about the pace of the investigation “biased.”

“Knowing something and being able to prove it may not be the same thing,” he said.

Still, the case is so unusual that police cannot liken it to any other. It has prompted concern among politicians, prosecutors and child welfare advocates.

Gov. Ben Cayetano said last month that he would seek a Senate investigation of the way Child Protective Services handled the Kema case, then changed his mind a few days later. He was concerned “about possible legal action,” an aide said.

Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said a grand jury would be a good way to ask questions, but cautioned against moving too swiftly.

“Cases can often be proved down the line,” Carlisle said. “We have tried cases that were decades old in this office. Somebody has a pang of conscience, someone has a death-bed confession, someone decides it is time to come forward. So if you don’t have enough evidence you can’t go and you shouldn’t go.”

The strongest comments, though, have come from Anne Clarkin, director of the Missing Child Center-Hawaii, which features Peter Boy at the top of its web page.

“We have to make sure that Peter Boy isn’t forgotten, that we get some answers as to what happened to him,” Clarkin said. “The public has to demand we find out what happened. How can we just lose one of our children and five months later we are not any closer to finding him?”

Clarkin said Peter Boy’s parents need to be held accountable because they are responsible for the welfare of their children.

“Everybody is pointing fingers at the police, CPS,” she said. “Let us point fingers at where they should be pointed, the parents. Is it reasonable for a parent to give a child to someone he hasn’t seen in 16 years? Is it a reasonable expectation that the child will be well taken care of?”

Clarkin is so angry about the case that she has promised to introduce a bill to the Legislature next year that will strengthen the state’s child endangerment laws, which govern actions like putting your child in the hands of a dangerous person.

“If you can give your child away willy-nilly, is that protecting the child?” she said. “If you can give your child to a virtual stranger, isn’t that child endangerment?”

Oct. 21, 1998

Two investigators with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were on the Big Island last week to help Hilo detectives determine what happened to Peter Boy Kema, a 7-year-old child abuse victim who hasn’t been seen by relatives in 20 months.

The investigators, both retired law enforcement officers, reviewed details of the Kema case with police in Hilo, said Ron Jones, a senior case manager with the national center located in Arlington, Va.

He said their preliminary report is encouraging. But Jones, who was a homicide detective in Washington, D.C., for 17 years, said the Kema case is one of the stranger cases he has seen.

Relatives say they have not seen Peter Boy since February 1997. Some fear the child is dead and are skeptical of the explanation of his whereabouts given by his father, Peter Kema Sr.

Kema said he gave the boy to a family friend named Auntie Rose Makuakane, whom he ran into while job-hunting on Oahu in August 1997. He said he was running out of money and living in Aala Park, so felt his son would be better off with the woman.

Police have not been able to prove the woman exists.

The national center monitors hundreds of thousands of child abduction cases and operates a Web site, which has posted Peter Boy’s case for several weeks. The center provides technical expertise to missing child clearinghouses — including the Missing Child Center-Hawaii.

The investigators are part of the center’s Project Alert Team, and are provided free of charge, Jones said. They draw from a large reservoir of experience and serve as consultants, but do not hit the streets to do investigative work.

“When a law enforcement agency has gone as far as it has gone, sometimes it is helpful to have a new perspective,” Jones said. “From talking to the investigators there in Hawaii, they have done a real good investigation. And we thought if we could send out a couple of gentlemen from Project Alert to review what they have done, we could help them with some new avenues.”

Big Island police have had a difficult time with the case because Peter Boy’s parents, Peter and Jaylin Kema, have been advised by their attorneys not to answer questions at this time. Jaylin Kema originally reported her son missing in January, about four months after her husband was said to have given the child to Makuakane.

Hawaii County Prosecutor Jay Kimura has said he is satisfied with the police investigation so far and does not see a need for an investigative grand jury, which would have the power to further question the child’s parents.

The FBI, which has volunteered to work at the direction of Big Island police, has helped with the investigation and has tracked leads in several states, said agent John Pikus.

Big Island Police Capt. Morton Carter said his department requested the help. The Mainland investigators made suggestions, but Carter would not elaborate. He is waiting for a final report.

“We were happy to have someone come in from outside of our department and objectively review what we have done,” Carter said. “This is not something somebody told us to do. I think we have stated from the start that we are trying to pursue this investigation as aggressively as possible. This is one phase of that.”

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