The Other Side of Paradise

0:00My friend called me and she was hysterical and she said, Sandra's been killed. I was like, oh my God. As soon as she was killed, we all knew who did it. As the months went on, we just realized that this guy's going to get off. How is this happening? Just keep praying. That's all we can do. There aren't a lot of murders in paradise. People still talk about this one. Just a darling girl with two darling children. It's a story Keith Morrison followed for more than a decade. How? When? I got a call from her boss said she hadn't showed up before. They found her in the car. I saw in the back of her neck some literature marks.

0:45She just didn't deserve that. A small island, a small pool of suspects. Ryan, her lover with a past. I had no idea he was a drug dealer. And Darren, the soon-to-be ex-husband. That morning he called in sick. Was Darren polygraphed? He didn't pass. And the lover? He didn't do that good either. Without much else to go on, this case was growing colder by the day. Nothing. Just nothing happens. But a father doesn't forget. I have to have justice for my daughter. After all these years, are there still secrets to uncover? It's been quite a journey for you. It isn't over yet. This father finally got his answer.

1:26But is it the one he wanted? Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine what we're going through now. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with the other side of paradise.

1:45Wandering through this land, you wonder if you've been transported to the beginning of biblical time.

1:53To a garden free of want. Temptation. or betrayal. A tropical paradise.

2:06And in a land so distractingly beautiful, tourists who ebb and flow like the tides could be forgiven for looking past this lone, tormented father, begging for help for a terrible reason to solve the murder of his precious daughter, Sandy. I really appreciate anything. No, no, no, anything we can do. We're, uh... This takes time, Doug. We hope. We hope we get an arrest this year. This is how close they are. We are 90 % there. Okay. It's all good. Thanks. We first came upon Larry Mendonca, well, on another Dateline assignment, way back in 2009, which is when we shot this video. He was 68 years old then.

2:54Alone, he worked, handing out flyers, gruff and stoic. Except when the pain was just too much. Just three years.

3:07It's still rough.

3:15Larry took us to Sandra's grave, told us how he promised to bring her killer to justice. She won't be forgotten as long as I'm alive. We had no idea, then, where this meeting would lead us. That our journey would last a decade. In case it would expose evil lurking in this garden paradise. And bring Larry to the edge of his own mortality. Many on Kawaii knew Sandra. Even watched her as a teenager, dancing in a local marketing video. Later, as a 20-something, at the head of a parade float. Look at the beautiful palaka right over there, gang. Like many here, she was multiracial, growing up in a household that was half Japanese, half Portuguese, all Hawaiian.

4:03And a devout Catholic who attended St. Catherine's School with friends Alma Umala and Joni Morita. So when people ask you what was Sandy like, we'd tell them. She was absolutely a go-getter. Like, she was teacher's pet. Oh, really? Always perfect. She always had her hair nicely done. You know, she was always focused. In high school, Sandra was an athlete, a cheerleader, very popular. She was a complete package. And her home life? Old-fashioned, traditional family, you know, Catholic, play by the rules type of people, yeah. Discipline. A very important thing to Larry, he the 20-year Air Force veteran.

4:57I was trying to toughen her up, if you want to put it in that expression, to know what the real world was like. That was why Mary insisted Sandra leave Kauai to go to college. She ended up in Honolulu. But for a small island girl, it felt as big and lonely as New York City. She missed Kauai, her family, and would come home as often as she could. That's when she got involved with Darren. And Darren was here. Darren was here. Darren Gallas, a little older, made good money at his highway construction job. Sandra was crazy about him. And soon after she moved home, they got married. Son Austin came nine months later, and Brayden two years after that.

5:46So by the age of 24, Sandra was the matriarch of her own little clan. She loved the boys to death. I mean, she, you know, they were the apple of her eye. Life was good until April 2005, when Sandra came to her parents very upset. As she told us, she was cleaning out her husband's backpack when two papers fell out, two phone numbers. So she called the phone numbers, and it turned out to be two different married women. Sandra confronted Darren. He would never admit it. He just kept saying they were friends, they were friends. And she knew otherwise. She knew what it was. By June, Darren had moved out.

6:28And Sandra moved on, got a job at the Beach House restaurant, an island landmark. It was a life changer. She was just a darling girl, you know, with two darling children. Krista Hall was a waitress at the Beach House and saw firsthand Sandra's transformation from quiet island girl to young working woman. And she wore her hair back in a ponytail and she was very prim and proper and very, you know, subdued. and then as soon as she got away from Darren, she was like, cut her hair in a bob, and it was really cute and stylish all of a sudden. Sandra started going out with friends, and as is pretty obvious in this concert video, she was enjoying her new life.

7:08But before too long, Sandra started getting friendly with one of the chefs, a recent transplant from Oahu named Ryan Shinjo. He wined and dined her and, you know, took really good care of her, and he was, I mean, he was really nice to her. I mean, they were always, you know, doing all kinds of fabulous things. Going on Honolulu shopping trips, for instance, where Ryan would lavish expensive gifts on Sandra, like Louis Vuitton luggage. Larry and Sandra's mom, Toshi, knew little of this relationship. And on January 25, 2006, were in Dallas visiting their son when they got an odd call from Sandra's boss.

7:46I said she hadn't showed up before. It was very unusual for her. Hours later, the phone rang again. It was 3 a.m., a time when bad news comes calling. Larry's son answered the phone. And this is basically how he goes. Hello, you know, oh, hi. Hi, cousin. No! When we come back... She was slumped to the right, to the passenger seat, face down. Who wanted Sandra dead? From what we're told, he went ballistic. He just flipped off.

8:39She was beyond the Eden of the tourist sea, out of sight of the rich and verdant estates of the wealthy few. She was in a neighborhood more working-class suburbia than Polynesian paradise. In her own small ranch house, in her garage, in her car, she'd been strangled to death. It was Sandra's new boyfriend, Ryan Shinjo, who called the police, said he found her that way. And she was slumped to the right, to the passenger seat, face down into the seat. Roy Asher was one of the original investigators. We spoke to him in 2009. This was three years after Sandra was murdered. I saw in the back of her neck some literature marks.

9:28We didn't find the cord itself. We have an idea of what could have been used. What? A thin cord, like a fishing line. Sandra's shirt and bra were askew. Her lip was split, as if she'd been punched in the face. Ryan, the boyfriend, he's the one on the right of the screen, told investigators he discovered Sandra's body around 9 p.m. But the cops could see she'd been dead for a while by then. Probably 8 to 10 hours. Which would have put the time of death about when? In the morning. Could you get any more exact? No. Given that the estranged husband, Darren, used to live with Sandra, and Ryan was now dating her, Their fingerprints could certainly be explained.

10:13Nothing suspicious there. But Ryan finding the body? Well, that was potentially suspicious. Did he have an alibi? Yes. Ah, and it checked out? Yes. Do you remember what it was? He was at work. So who else? Well, there was Sandra's estranged husband, Darren, of course. And this was interesting. That morning, he called in sick. So, in other words, he didn't have an alibi. No. Based simply on that lack of an alibi, the police arrested Darren. When they first said, you think her husband could have done it? And I said, my first reaction was no. But even as Larry tried to wrap his mind around that idea, a detective called him the following day.

11:04And he says, we got to let him go. We don't have enough. We've talked to the prosecuting attorney and we don't have enough. Meaning what? Was Darren involved or not? Hit by grief and impatient for answers, Larry launched an investigation of his own. It was like a, I don't know, a panic. I mean, I've got so many things to do and I've got to get it done now. As a native Hawaiian and veteran Air Force intelligence analyst, Larry had both the connections and the skills to piece together the details surrounding his daughter's murder. For instance, he found out that two days before the killing, Darren, while working on a road crew, saw Sandra and Ryan together.

11:54She goes driving by with her boyfriend in the car. And from what we're told for his co-workers at the time, he went ballistic. He just flipped out. At that time, and this is important to the case, Sandra and Darren shared custody of their two sons, but remember, she worked evenings at the restaurant, so the boys slept over with Darren, and at 6 o 'clock in the morning, she would show up, pick them up, take them off for breakfast, get them ready for school and daycare. But Larry discovered that on the night before she was murdered, Sandra stayed over at Ryan's house, her boyfriend. He dropped her off at her place at 6 a.m.

12:33And then, the neighbors told Larry, they saw her leave in her car soon after that, apparently heading to pick up the boys. And neighbors confirmed they saw Sandra's car return a short while later, but without the children. Larry learned through his contacts that Sandra had a 10 o 'clock appointment that morning to get her nails done at a salon about 45 minutes away. She never made the appointment. So this is how we narrowed down the time of death before about 9 o 'clock, where she would have had to leave to make her appointment. The cops didn't tell him, but Larry learned from his own sources that boyfriend Ryan had an alibi.

13:18Well, husband Darren did not. All of which got Larry thinking the same thing as the police. Must have been Darren who murdered Sandra. Right now, I'm driven by the case. I mean, I've got to get there. Many of Sandra's friends, like Krista Hall, also thought Darren was guilty. I think everyone thought that Darren would be arrested immediately, and he would be going to jail, and the children would be going to the grandparents or her brother, and everything was going to be okay. And exactly one year after the murder, there was indeed an arrest. But it wasn't Darren. Coming up, a new theory about Sandra's murder.

14:01She may have been smuggling drugs and not even knowing it. And a threat from her father. If I ever figure out a way to get away with it, it'll happen. When Dateline continues.

14:24Kauai is unique in many ways, not the least of which is this. It's almost a media-free zone. Most information spreads here as it has for generations, by word of mouth, where facts, opinions, and gossip all swirl together as one. and the news swept across the island like a rogue wave. Ryan Shinjo had been arrested, but not by the island cops, by the FBI. Then we hear that Ryan is gone to jail and we're like, oh my God, what, did he do it? Then we hear, no, no, he went to jail for drug dealing, which none of us knew he was a drug dealer. I had no idea he was a drug dealer. Ryan, it turned out, was a player in a big-money drug trafficking ring, running meth from the mainland to Oahu to Kauai.

15:15Well, when people found out about that, rumors started to fly. Was Ryan using Sandra as an unwitting drug mule when he took her to Honolulu? Was she bringing back meth with her? Who knows, she may have been smuggling drugs in her new Louis Vuitton suitcases and not even knowing it, you know. And the final act of that story? Sandra found out about the drug ring and was killed before she could go to the police. But that was just a rumor in a sea of rumors. Police didn't seem any closer to finding Sandra's killer, whoever it was. The case grew colder with each passing year. Larry still thought Darren killed Sandra.

16:00And it seemed wherever Larry went on this small island, there he was. This is the house here with the boat and the truck in there. It's not easy giving by here knowing that he's still running free. We've got to get this case solved. On this day, Larry and Sandra's mom Toshi had to see Darren at grandson Austin's Little League game. That's Darren on the field coaching. And in the dugout with his girlfriend, Shereen. a woman he'd known since before Sandra's murder. And it was at this point, 2009, three years after Sandra's murder, when Larry felt the time had come for him to go from investigator to avenger.

16:47He was seriously thinking about killing Darren. If I ever figure out a way to get away with it,

16:57it'll happen. Fortunately, the arrival of a new Kauai police chief put his plans on hold. Daryl Perry, a 30-year veteran of the Honolulu PD, agreed to meet with Larry and listen to his theories about the case. He showed me the scene and he explained to me what happened and I could feel his grief. I mean, it wasn't of any forensic value to you to be there to look at it, was it? No, not at all. The point was what? The point was I wanted him to realize that there is somebody there that's listening to him. So what did you do next?

17:42We went to her gravesite. We stood there and... What were you thinking about? I was thinking about the sadness in the loss of a child. There's nothing, nothing, nothing like it. Nobody can understand unless they've been there. Not unless you've lost a child. Chief Perry was struggling to tell us that he did know what it was like to lose a child. He came out of retirement and took the job as head of the Kauai Police Department after the sudden death of his 26-year-old son, Erickson. I feel in a way that I'm working through him, that he motivates me. I believe that things happen for a reason. And in fact, I told Larry this.

18:36I told him, there's a reason why we met. I don't know what the reasons are. But I'm here for you. So after meeting with Larry, Chief Perry sent Sandra's file to a couple of friends in Honolulu, investigators with the state attorney general's cold case unit. I asked them to see if they can find anything else that we may have missed. And they did indeed find something. Using what was breakthrough science for that time, early 2009, cold case investigators extracted touch DNA from Sandra's shirt and bra. Chief Perry called Larry with the news. And he said, they got something. They re-scanned their clothes, and they found two, how did he put it, two microscopic particles of a male origin.

19:27Coming up, sometimes it's what you find, and sometimes it's what you don't. Going through the calendar, it's pretty detailed from January 1st, every day. But on the morning of Sandra's murder... You got nothing.

19:55It took a scientific breakthrough to finally get Larry Mendonca the help he was pleading for. Touch DNA, microscopic skin cells on Sandra's shirt and bra. It was a match to Darren. When that result came in, tell me what your first thoughts were. We got them. But Larry was wary. It isn't over yet. Because what seemed like great evidence to the cops did not to the newly elected prosecuting attorney, Shailene Lassari. For one simple reason. The DNA did not exclusively match Darren. It could have come from the two children. Larry, though, refused to be discouraged. The driving force is to get this case solved and put my daughter to rest.

20:47Because she isn't here. Hopefully it'll be this year. Hopefully it'll be 2009. We're close. But 2009 ended as it had begun, with the case in stasis. No breaks, no leads, no arrests. And 2010 was no different. Same for 2011. Nothing. It's fair to say Sandra's murder investigation was very much cold. So, 2012 now, six years after the murder, and three years after that DNA test, Chief Perry gave the case to a new detective named Bryson Ponce, who re-examined the physical evidence like Sandra's car, undisturbed since the day she was murdered. She was sitting down in the driver's seat, and from her waist up was pulled, slouched over into the passenger seat.

21:43You said pulled. Did it appear that it had been yanked over that way? It appeared that way, yeah. We believed that there was a struggle outside of the vehicle in the garage, and that's due to some evidence that was on the outside front of the vehicle. What was it? Smudge marks, some hair. When you look at how this homicide happened, it wasn't sexually motivated or it wasn't a robbery. It really was focused on anger. And so Ponce circled right back to those original two suspects. Husband Darren, boyfriend Ryan. But which one? From the file, Ponce learned Ryan, in addition to being a drug trafficker, had also been convicted of domestic violence.

22:26And was there something fishy about how he found Sandra's body? He told the cops he went to Sandra's house. Doors were locked. Said he peered through these ventilation slats at the base of her garage wall. Said he saw Sandra in her car. And calling out, Sandra, Sandra. And then he says that he couldn't get into the door. He called a friend to come and help him open the door. Called a friend to help him find a body? Wouldn't be the first time a guilty party did that. And did Ryan remain here at the scene, wait for the police officers? and talked to them there? Was there anything in the report about his demeanor that night?

23:05You know, initially investigators thought that maybe he wasn't seeing everything that happened. Yeah, he was holding back a little. Yeah, and maybe he was a little bit nervous. But Ryan had an alibi, right? He was at work when Sandra was killed. Well, Fonse found out the estimated time of Sandra's death was really more of a rough guess. and that Sandra could just as well have been murdered hours earlier when Ryan wasn't at work. And then there were the results from Ryan's 2006 polygraph exam. What was the result of that? He was in view of his past. Which didn't look good for Ryan. Except Darren's polygraph result didn't look so great either.

23:48How'd he do? He didn't do that good. He didn't pass. Now that was interesting. Both suspects failed the polygraph. So now Ponce looked at the evidence against Darren, who gave police two entirely different accounts of the morning of the murder. First, he said Sandra came by to get the kids. Then a minute later, said she didn't. Now, remember, Darren and Sandra were going through a divorce in a heated child custody battle. So Darren apparently thought it'd be a good idea to take note of run-ins with Sandra, like the time she was late in picking up the boys, hoping it would one day help him in court.

24:30You know, going through the calendar, what I found really interesting is that it's pretty detailed from January 1st, every day, all the way up until the 24th. It's the very last entry. And on the 25th, you got nothing. Why is that important? Because Sandra was murdered that very morning, the morning of the 25th, about the time when she would have been picking up her sons. You would expect Darren to have wrote down in there that Sandra never showed up to pick up the boys, that he had to take off from work. But he didn't. Nor did he call her to find out why she was a no-show. Ponce theorized that Sandra actually did go to Darren's house to get the boys, but there was an argument of some sort, and she left without them.

25:23Darren, still angry, followed her home, parking his truck on a street behind Sandra's cul-de-sac. This path, you know, basically leads to the cul-de-sac, and her house is just three houses down, right when you come to the end of this walkway. Very, very close, easy access. So you think that Darren came up, followed her, had the confrontation there, killed her with a ligature, choked her to death, then what did he do? You know, I think after the incident happened over here, he went back is where he came and just took off and headed back home. And nobody saw him. You know, it was still dark. Ponce also found this email Sandra sent her lawyer just three weeks before her murder.

26:10Darren started asking me about my boyfriend, as he calls him, Ryan. He got really upset and started swearing at me. He started shaking me, telling me to tell him the truth, and don't ever call him again. Ponce worked the investigation for close to a year, and as he weighed and re-weighed the evidence, he always came back to Darren, who lacked an alibi, who called in sick to work, who gave conflicting accounts about the morning of the murder, who left blank the diary entry for the 25th, who failed a polygraph, who was jealous of Ryan, who never called Sandy to find out why she didn't pick up the boys.