The Misery Machine - The Unsolved Case of Lisa Au

Starting point is 00:00:09 Hi, the Misery Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're covering one of Hawaii's more infamous cold cases. And that's the Lisa Al Murder. This one came from Kaliya in Hawaii. She wrote to us via Instagram. So thank you so much for your suggesting Kailia.

Starting point is 00:00:23 Yes, thank you very much. And if you too want to request a case, you can leave a comment here on YouTube or reach out to us in any of our social media platforms. And if you are listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. This is the best way to support our channel and help raise our platforms so we can get smaller cases like these out to a bigger audience. But without further ado, The murder of Lisa Ow.

Starting point is 00:00:45 On the rainy evening of January 20th, 1982, 19-year-old Lisa Ow and her boyfriend, Doug Holmes, planned to meet up at his sister's apartment in Makiki. Having finished her night shift as a hair dresser at the Susan Beer's salon at 9.45 p.m., Lisa commenced to making her way to the meeting point in the pouring rain. Before arriving at her destination, Lisa stopped at the grocery store in order to pick up food for the gathering.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Poke, a Hawaiian-style raw fish dish, was on the menu tonight. The meeting itself, though, turned out to be oddly short, with both Lisa and Doug separately departing around 12.20 a.m. Doug returned to his dorm room at the University of Hawaii, while Lisa allegedly made her way back home to Kailua. After Lisa didn't make it home, her parents became understandably worried as to her safety and her whereabouts. Without wasting any further time, the Ows called Lisa's boyfriend Doug as they were aware their daughter was with him the night prior. Unsurprisingly, Doug volunteered to help find Lisa.

Starting point is 00:01:56 While searching for Lisa, Doug came upon a disturbing discovery and contacted the police. Lisa's abandoned car, which was a 1976 Toyota, was parked on the side of the highway in Mono Willie, near the old Kailua Drive-in. The driver's side window was rolled down about halfway, and the car's floor was flooded with about two to three inches of water, and the seats were soaking wet. Though Lisa's purse was found lying in the passenger seat, it appeared to be left relatively dry and untouched. The only thing missing from it was Lisa's driver's license.

Starting point is 00:02:32 The officer expressed concern that the purse may have been placed on the seat after the torrential rain had stopped. He had also reported seeing scratches on Holmes' face. Crime scene technicians would later determine that Ow's car had been wiped clean of any evidence. Thousands of missing persons flyers were distributed around Oahu Island by numerous volunteers in hopes of finding Lisa alive. However, the desperate search attempts came to a halt soon afterward when, unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:03:01 the worst was confirmed. On January 31st, 1982, exactly 10 days after the grueling search began, Lisa Owes' nude decomposing body was found in a ravine off tantal. Drive, which was a mountainous wood area with no street lights installed along its length at the time. Due to the decomposed state of Lisa's body and the lack of evidence forensic officers had to work with at the time, Lisa's cause of death was never determined. All investigators had were the witnesses and their testimonies. In their testimonies, a few witnesses claimed that sometime in the past, they had been assaulted by a man in an unmarked vehicle posing as a police officer.

Starting point is 00:03:44 Considering Owse car was found on the side of the highway with one of its windows half open, a killer cop scenario seems plausible. The rumors spread like wildfire across the state of Hawaii, and especially on the Oahu Island. And we're trying our best to say these correct. I hope we're saying it correct. This not only left Oahu citizens in terror, but also fueled their rage towards the police for mishandling Lisa Ows case. In response to these allegations, an officer was placed under full, investigation, while the police policy on unmarked police vehicles was altered. After the suspected officer's name leaked out, another woman from the windward side claimed he also pulled her over and that he used blue lights on his unmarked car to do so.

Starting point is 00:04:31 The new details triggered widespread fear among women that a traffic stop could be deadly. The department even sought to reassure women that they didn't have to stop for unmarked police cars and eventually HPD banned flashing lights on car grills altogether. In the meantime, investigators continue their focus on the police officer. The primary pieces of evidence against him, the windward Oahu woman's suspicious traffic stop and a sexual harassment complaint against him from a young woman during a police ride-along. He also lived near Owes' home. Ultimately, the investigation led to a dead ends, with no charges being pressed against the officer in question. After getting nowhere with police, the Ow family decided to hire ex-Honolulu Police Department

Starting point is 00:05:18 Homicide Lieutenant Bert Cornell as a private detective, who was originally in charge of Lisa's case. Cornel was the one to expose the many errors made by the police while investigating Lisa's case. The killer cop theory was debunked by Cornell alone. He believes that if basic investigative work was done on Lisa's case, that this would have been solved much earlier. So, for example, Aow's temporary license missing from her purse in the car window roll down halfway, in the citizens' minds, meant she was pulled over and had passed the license to an officer. However, it was later discovered that Lisa had forgotten to pick it back up after signing a check at the grocery store on the night the meeting with her boyfriend Doug took place.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Cornel also expressed his doubts about the medical examiner's work on Lisa's body. So one year after Lisa's murder, her body was exhumed and was moved to Los Angeles in order to be re-examined by the coroner there. When Lisa's casket was opened, it was full of leaves and dirt and rubbish, according to the coroner. And her body hadn't been washed when the original autopsy was performed. She was still in the original police body bag. As a result, decomposition had advanced, making it further impossible to pinpoint the cause of death. And I know that this wasn't exactly what you were going for in college, but is this basically not following protocol?

Starting point is 00:06:46 No, you always wash somebody. Yeah, that's what I thought. Even if they're going to be cremated, when they pass away, you wash them. It's just what you do, and it's common courtesy to do so. Not to mention they left the casket full of debris. This seems so strange. And to be in the original police body bag, I don't know how common that is. I don't think it's that common.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Also, parts of her body are now missing. They don't know if they were actually returned to her grave. I know that the Los Angeles Police Department had examined her jawbone, and they don't know what happened to that jawbone after. Well, I was going to ask, is it pieces of her skeleton or organs? It's pieces of her skeleton at this point. Okay. Yeah, I'm sure the organs decomposed at that point. So just like most other murder cases, the lead suspect to Lisa Ow's case was her significant other, Doug Holmes.

Starting point is 00:07:36 While not proven guilty, many suspicious signs seem to point otherwise. Thomas Thornberg, a security guard at the Makiki apartment building where Doug's sister lived, was interviewed by Cornille. He said that around 11 p.m. that night, he had heard a couple arguing and then saw Lisa Al leaving the premises, while Doug was seen leaving a couple minutes later. So Doug Holmes was also issued two lie detector tests, which he failed. His excuse was he felt guilty for not driving Lisa home that night, as she was an inexperienced driver.

Starting point is 00:08:12 To top this all off is a claim made by Charlotte Kamaka, a newspaper delivery driver interviewed by Cornille. She later testified before the grand jury about what she saw on Tantalist Drive in the hours after Al went missing. She said she was on her regular route at about 2.30 a.m. She claimed she saw a man driving in a blue car along with a woman in the passenger seat who seemed to be asleep or unconscious. However, Kamaka's claims were never able to be verified. I do remember reading she had stated that when the car went around a turn, she saw the person who she believed to be asleep or unconscious head just fall.

Starting point is 00:08:50 That's kind of hard to verify. I mean, I... Especially at 2.30 a.m. Yeah, you would think it'd be pretty dark. I don't know what 2.30 is like in Hawaii, but I think that would be really hard to make out. Especially where on Tantilus Drive, there wasn't any streetlights at that time. Yeah, not at all. So I can see why that would be thrown out of court as evidence.

Starting point is 00:09:11 And do they ever confirm whether or not Doug had a blue car? Yeah, I couldn't find anything about that at all. So sadly, almost 40 years have passed since Lisa's murder. yet no progress has been made on her case since then. Whether the case was hampered by internal tensions within the Honolulu department, or it simply lacked the proper evidence for it to be solved is up for debate. Unless new evidence and witnesses show up, out's case will likely remain unsolved forever.

Starting point is 00:09:42 And that's sadly the case with a lot of older cold cases. Yeah. I mean, you think about, yeah, it was the 80s, but it was the early 80s. A lot of things have changed since then. A person that might know something or been responsible may not even be alive anymore. The longer these go on, it's harder to ensure anything will happen. And with her body so badly decomposed and mishandled, it's hard to guarantee that new DNA evidence would turn up nowadays. And sadly, her parents have already passed.

Starting point is 00:10:13 Both of them. Both of them. Oh, my God. She has a remaining sister. It's incredibly unfortunate. If you know anything about what happened to Lisa Al, please call. call the Honolulu Police Department at 808-529-311, or you can visit HonoluluPD.org. One other thing that should be mentioned about this case is theories that it's linked to either

Starting point is 00:10:37 the person that killed Diane Suzuki or potentially the Honolulu Strangler. Now, if you're not familiar with either of these, we'll start with the Honolulu Strangler. The Honolulu Strangler is Hawaii's first known serial killer. They were responsible for the death of five women in Honolulu from 1985 to 1986. Five confirmed. Five confirmed. And this person has never been caught. There was another, I want to say, nine women who they thought may have been linked to this.

Starting point is 00:11:11 But the only reason they were able to confirm the five is because they were all killed and found in the same way. Specifically, a calling card was leaving the hands tied behind their backs and also the way in which the women were assaulted. This might be a case we cover in the future, so I don't want to go too deeply into it, but some people believe, whereas Lisa Al was murdered in 1982, that this could have been an early kill by the Honolulu Strangler. However, the Honolulu Strangler was not found to have been operating until three years later. Same thing with Diane Suzuki. Her body was never found, but she disappeared on July 6, 1985, which was right when the Honolulu Strangler was at large. Now, ultimately, with Diane Suzuki, they did not find a link, though some people theorized

Starting point is 00:12:03 that if they found her body, maybe it would have been linked to the Honolulu Strangler. So it is worth mentioning, even though I don't think that Lisa Ows case is related to both of these. but these are things that people talk about. And it is interesting to mention that we have one unsolved case in Lisa Ow, and then Diane Suzuki and the Honolulu Strangler, all within a few years of each other. All really in the same area. It's also important to note that Lisa Ow and Diane Suzuki,

Starting point is 00:12:34 oftentimes their pictures get misattributed to each other. Yeah. When I was looking up stuff on Lisa Ow, you would see Diane Suzuki's picture as placeholders. We don't have a whole lot of experience with Hawaii. If women go missing a lot there more than other parts of the U.S., I mean, granted, it's not the continental U.S., but still, like, do women go missing here more often than other parts of the U.S.? Are there more murders of women here in other parts of the U.S.?

Starting point is 00:13:04 These are things I'm curious about. Thank you to Kay Leia. I hope I said your name correct on Instagram that brought this case to our attention. I don't know a whole lot about Hawaii or Hawaii true crime. I was curious if the problems that plague rural U.S. cold cases applied here. And there was a lot of mishandlings. You could say that the police department were inept. But if you didn't tell me this was in a major part of Hawaii,

Starting point is 00:13:34 I would have assumed this was handled by a very small town. And it's sad to see the parallels. of a lot of former cases we've covered with this. Yes, she actually suggested two different cases to us. So Lisa Al, which is the one that I chose to do notes for, and also Dana Ireland. So Dana Ireland, I want to go ahead and maybe cover her in the future, but essentially just a quick synopsis, she was hit on her bike and was beaten and assaulted and found in some bushes. And she later died because a lot of different mishandum.

Starting point is 00:14:12 It took very, very long time for ambulance services to come get her. And like I said, she passed away. There have been three different arrests in her case, but most people consider the case to still be unsolved. So very good cases to bring to our attention. It's as if you knew exactly the types of cases we like to focus on, which are ones that are mishandled, cold cases, small ones that the media didn't cover well. That's kind of where we like to put our efforts. So I really appreciate you getting a vibe for, you know, what we try to cover on here.

Starting point is 00:14:47 There's some interesting parallels between the two. I don't want to get too far into it without covering Dana Ireland in full. But maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe I'm not. Folks from Hawaii can kind of chime in on this. But I almost wonder if there's some cultural or racial parallels in this where Lisa Al is a native Hawaiian person and her case goes unsolved. Much like in the mainland we see a lot of cases with.

Starting point is 00:15:12 the indigenous people going unsolved. Yeah, our natives often here and in Canada. Where Dana Ireland is a white woman and she's got three arrests. Very possible. It's interesting. I don't, you know, want to go too far into it, but it's just what I observed in the small amount of research I was able to do. So if you're from Hawaii or if you've spent a decent portion of time there and you

Starting point is 00:15:37 understand what life's like there, if you can get in touch with us, Missouri Machine podcast at gmail.com, reach out to us on social media. Let us know if that assumption is correct. And anything that you can share about what the culture is like there and how it could impact a case, things that you feel that we should have known or mentioned in regards to the case that could have made an impact. I would love to hear from you because it's not a place that either of us have been. I'd love to go. I would too. It seems so lovely. I would too. Yes. I've had family members that just went and they loved it. My mom loved it. I would love to. I would love to. go. I'd absolutely love to go. And if you're listening on YouTube, if you please hit like and

Starting point is 00:16:15 subscribe, this is the best way to support our channel and ensure that our platform gets raised. It's hard to get into the YouTube algorithm covering small cases. And by hitting like and subscribe, you ensure that we can get these smaller, lesser known cases out to more people and get them the platform they deserve. If you're listening on the other platforms, if you want to hit subscribe on there as well, this helps us very much. 2. We aren't just a YouTube channel. We are a podcast first and foremost. We also have a very wonderful group of people who have decided to go that extra step to support us on Patreon. So let's thank those people now. Thank you. Eddie, Rowan, Marky, Holly, Mark, Tara, Sophie, Karen,

Starting point is 00:17:00 Neil and Karen, Dave and Karina, Dakota, and Kitty, Jen Mo, Jenny, Nora, Robin, Tom, Kaylee, Alex, Jacob, Victoria, Bailey, Stephen, C, C. Asia, Casey, Amanda, Patricia, Alexis, Karen Sarah, Catherine, Jody, Sally, Kimberly, and Levi. Our highest tier of Patreon supporter. There's his lovely picture right now. He's beautiful. He is beautiful. And if you two want to support us on Patreon, patreon.com.

Starting point is 00:17:23 com slash the misery machine. You get access to all of our secret episodes. You get access to our secret discord, Snapchat groups, and you may even get a postcard. A haunted postcard. Patreon.com slash the misery machine. And I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but if you want to make episode requests, the best way to do that is leave a YouTube. comment or send us an email. I should also note that YouTube has been deleting our reply comments to

Starting point is 00:17:48 people and randomly deleting the most sweetest comments people have been leaving us. So if you think we're deleting your comment, there's a very good chance we did not delete your comments. We've never even seen it. Yeah, so please don't take it personally. Sometimes you've got to leave it more than once. It seems like on the videos that get a lot of traffic and get a lot of comments that happens. I'll write these big heartfelt comments back to people and then they just vanish. Yeah, it's so strange. This has been going on for a couple months now. So please just keep that in mind. If you got a response from us in your email and then you go there and you see it's gone, it wasn't us that deleted it. It was probably YouTube. And I don't know if it's just something

Starting point is 00:18:28 they do on videos that have a lot of traffic on there. I don't know. I mean, in general, YouTube doesn't like True Crime Podcast. That's why all of your support, likes, the subs, the comments. They go an awful long way because we're fighting an uphill battle here. The fact that we've gotten to 10,000 subs is no small feat, given that YouTube often demonetizes and hides true crime content from their viewers in the algorithm, considering it to be adult, even if we don't swear or give gory bits, but that's neither here nor there. Until next week, we love you. We love you. Bye.

The Misery Machine - The Unsolved Case of Lisa Au

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.