A Puna man recently known as a new suspect in the 1991 Big Island killing of Dana Ireland killed himself last week, just days after Hawaii County police took a cheek sample for a DNA test, according to lawyers handling the case.
The new data presented in court papers Sunday night through Innocence Project attorneys constitute two men who were former suspects in the case.
The two brothers and a third man were convicted of the murder in Ireland in 2000, but were exonerated last year after a new DNA study ruled them out as sources of the semen found on the girl’s body. female. One of the brothers, Albert Ian Schweitzer, spent 26 years in prison but maintained his innocence.
But the DNA investigation never revealed a new suspect until recently, according to the new court filing.
The document mentions him only as “Unknown Man No. 1” and does not reveal any names.
Now, attorneys say, Hawaii County police have failed to arrest him after collecting his DNA, even though they already had probable cause to arrest him.
Hawaii County police declined to discuss the new case Sunday night, but said in an email that the section plans to hold a news conference about the case on Monday.
Ireland, a 23-year-old Virginia woman visiting the Big Island, was hit on her bike, sexually assaulted, beaten and abandoned on a fishing trail in Puna on Christmas Eve. He died the next day at Hilo Medical Center.
Earlier this year, a private company, Indago Solutions, working with the Innocence Project, discovered a man living about 2 miles from where Ireland discovered him and knew him as a DNA fit most likely discovered on the body of Ireland, according to a motion presented on Sunday. through the Innocence Projects of New York and Hawaii, which the Schweitzer brothers constitute.
Investigators then secretly collected DNA from a fork he had used and found it matched DNA recovered from the crime scene with the court document.
The attorneys sent the data to Hawaii County police. But they claim in the court filing that the branch mishandled the investigation by arresting him at the time, giving him the opportunity to flee, destroy evidence or commit suicide.
The petition asks the court to compel the Hawaii County Police Department and the U. S. Attorney’s Office to turn over all evidence received related to the investigation of the new suspect.
A date has been set for Tuesday in Hilo court.
The movement presents Project Innocence’s summary of what has happened in months:
Using DNA evidence received at the scene of the murder, Indago Solutions, a private investigation and software company that works to identify other people’s DNA and public records, identified the suspect on Feb. 26, based on his ancestry, age, genetics and old address.
Aside from the fact that he lived near Ireland on the Wa’a Wa’a fishing route in Puna, his social media content indicated that he was an avid fisherman who was likely familiar with the route.
His Facebook page also showed that he owned or had a van in the early 1990s. At the time of Ireland’s murder, witnesses reported seeing a van at the scene of the bicycle collision in Ireland, as well as at the fishing route.
At the time of Ian Schweitzer’s conviction, the State argued that his Volkswagen Beetle left tire marks at the scene, but further investigations later showed that the marks did not belong to the Volkswagen and came from a truck or van.
DNA collected from semen from Ireland’s body indicated that the suspect was 80% Filipino ancestry. The boy known through Indago Solutions had 3 Filipino grandparents.
In addition, he would have been in his twenties at the time of the homicide and would have been short in stature, meaning he could likely have had compatibility with a Jimmy-Z t-shirt discovered on the fishing trail covered in Irish blood.
The FBI’s Genetic Genealogy Team then showed the effects of Indago and worked with the Hawaii County Police Department to collect a DNA pattern discarded from a fork. Discarded DNA can be collected without a warrant and is extracted from pieces left in public places.
On July 1, a crime lab contracted through the Innocence Project to perform post-conviction DNA analysis showed that DNA collected from the fork matched DNA collected from the crime scene in Ireland.
As the investigation progressed, attorneys for the Schweitzer brothers asked Hilo to order the Hawaii County Police Department and the prosecutor’s office to videotape any questioning of the man or any search of his property. They also asked that the FBI participate in the investigation.
“In particular, we emphasize that the HCPD has a clash of interests and that, in addition to the assistance of the Hawaiian FBI agent, the Attorney General’s Office deserves to be concerned with ensuring the fairness and independence of the final phase of the investigation. into the unknown. The number 1 man,” reads the movement.
The Innocence Project asked Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez to participate in the investigation, but she refused.
On July 19, Hawaii County police took a cheek swab from the suspect and submitted it Tuesday. The forensic laboratory demonstrated the next day that it matched the previous hairpin pattern and the patterns recovered from the crime scene.
On Tuesday, four days after the police visit, the man committed suicide, the medical examiner confirmed.
The movement claims that Innocence Project lawyers learned of the suspect’s death from the forensic pathologist whom they contacted because they had not noticed any information about the man’s arrest in police databases.
They were “deeply disturbed” when they learned that the suspect was not in police custody at the time of the sample collection, according to the request. His space was also not searched.
On Friday, Hawaii Innocence Project co-director Ken Lawson contacted Hilo’s examiner and the medical examiner showed the suicide.
Lawson questioned why police needed to take a sample from the suspect when they already had probable cause to arrest him because of DNA collected from the fork.
“You know it’s him, you don’t want any more DNA,” he said. “It didn’t make sense to go through arresting him or charging him. »
The Schweitzer brothers and a guy named Frank Pauline were charged with the 1997 Ireland murder after Pauline told the government that the Schweitzers had attacked Ireland. Pauline was serving time for sexual assault and unrelated robbery at the time.
The fees were withdrawn at one point after the three men were ruled out as carriers of the semen discovered in Ireland, but were reinstated after an informant said Ian Schweitzer made a criminal admission to him that Pauline had raped and killed the young woman. .
After jurors found Pauline and Ian Schweitzer guilty, Shawn Schweitzer agreed to a plea deal that would allow him to acknowledge time served and would not expose him to a potentially lengthy criminal sentence. He later said he regretted agreeing to confess.
Pauline later said she gave police data about the murder in Ireland so that drug charges against her brother would be dropped.
Ian Schweitzer was released from criminal custody on January 24, 2023, and his brother’s conviction was overturned on October 23 of the same year.
Pauline killed another inmate at a New Mexico prison in 2015. Her posthumous exoneration was delayed earlier this year because attorneys were waiting for an official copy of her death certificate, according to Hawaii News Now.
The death of the new suspect in the Irish case will now hamper investigators’ ability to uncover more facts of the case, Innocence Project lawyers argue in the motion.
The movement is asking police to turn over any recordings, emails or communications related to the suspect’s cheek swab and any data about what he said with the swab, where he took position and any surveillance on him who took position before or after. He also asked for more details about the police action, adding who made the decision not to arrest the man and whether his home was ever searched.
Lawson said the guy was probably the only user who knew what happened in Ireland. From now on, his circle of relatives will not be able to turn the page.
“What happened? Why did you do that?” Lawson said. “What were his last moments like? We will never know the answer to those questions.
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Madeleine Valera is a journalist for Civil Beat. You can reach her via email mlist@civilbeat. org and follow her on Twitter at @madeleine_list.
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