A man identified as the new suspect in the murder and sexual assault of a Virginia woman who visited Hawaii more than three decades ago died by suicide recently after police took a DNA swab from him, officials said.
The Hawaii Police Department on Friday said they matched the DNA taken from Dana Ireland’s body to that of 57-year-old Albert Lauro Jr. from Hawaiian Paradise Park on the Big Island. Police Chief Ben Moszkowicz said Lauro died by suicide and was found at home.
Authorities zeroed in on Lauro in the past few months and obtained a DNA sample from a discarded fork after seeing him eat lunch. He killed himself last week after police went to his home to test the sample against a swab taken from him.
The DNA work represents a major development in the case that made headlines last year when Albert “Ian” Schweitzer, who has been in prison for more than 20 years for murder, was released based on new evidence. Ireland’s body was found on Christmas Day 1991 on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Jennifer Sinco Kelleher / AP
Lauro lives two miles from the fishing road where Ireland was found, brutally beaten, HawaiiNewsNow reported. He died the next day.
Schweitzer was one of three men who spent time behind bars for his murder, but he has maintained his innocence. A judge is expected to rule Tuesday on the motion to formally exonerate him.
Police said DNA evidence provided grounds to press charges of rape against Lauro, but the statute of limitations on those charges expired last year. The killing is still within the statute of limitations for Irish death but police say they don’t have enough evidence to charge Lauro with murder.
“The presence of Lauro’s DNA at the crime scene is not enough evidence to prove that Lauro intentionally or knowingly caused her death,” Moskowicz said in a news conference broadcast live from Hilo.
Police hope Lauro’s cell phone will provide some answers and that family and friends who knew him in 1991 and now will help police determine what happened, Moskowicz said.
AP’s efforts to reach Lauro’s brother were unsuccessful.
Lawyers say the police botched the investigation
Schweitzer’s attorney took the police to task, alleging that they intentionally botched the investigation into Lauro by not taking steps to ensure that he didn’t run away or kill himself after obtaining his DNA. They suggested that because the man was dead, the truth about what happened in Ireland would not be revealed. They also demanded a federal investigation, as well as all communications related to the DNA work.
“We know he has a family. He has a good life,” said Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck, who assisted the Hawaii Innocence Project in Schweitzer’s case about Lauro. “It’s known in law enforcement circles … if you have DNA on a man and you know he’s committed a crime, if you don’t take him into custody, there’s a serious chance he’ll run away, destroy evidence or kill himself. .”
Moskowicz said that if the police arrested Lauro without reason, the court would not accept the evidence they collected.
He denied the police sabotaged the case.
“This is completely wrong, 100% untrue,” he said, adding that police would follow the evidence wherever it went.
Mayor Mitch Roth, who was the Big Island’s top prosecutor when Schweitzer’s attorney and prosecutor signed a “conviction integrity agreement” to reinvestigate the case, said Monday that he stood behind the police and noted that the results of the collected swabs were not. enter until after Lauro’s death.
Lauro wasn’t even on law enforcement’s radar when Roth was a prosecutor: “I don’t remember seeing this guy in the police report when I was solving the case.”
Moskowicz said Lauro was arrested once in 1987 for shoplifting when he was about 20 years old.
The push to find out who killed Ireland gained renewed traction after the January 2023 release of Schweitzer, who was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to 130 years in prison. Innocence Project attorneys who took the case said they did not match the DNA on the shirt found near Ireland. The shirt was not of Irish origin, but was soaked in blood and contained the DNA of an unknown person.
Marco Garcia / The Innocence Project via AP Images
Although Schweitzer has been acquitted, his legal team and prosecutors continue to quibble over whether he is truly innocent and deserves compensation for his years in prison.
Attorney Schweitzer’s Innocence Project traced the DNA match with the help of Steven Kramer, a retired FBI attorney and federal prosecutor who led the genetic genealogy team that solved the Golden State Killer case in 2018. Kramer found a match, based on genetics, ancestry, age. , and address history, among other factors.
Ken Lawson, of the Hawaii Innocence Project, said that Kramer could go back to the records, going back to the 1700s in Hawaii,” according to HawaiiNewsNow.
Lauro was believed to be in his mid-20s at the time and owned or had access to a pickup truck that would have left tire marks found at the scene, court filings said.
“Disappointed in the way things turned out”
Innocence Project lawyers looked up his Facebook page and saw that he was still an avid fisherman and must have been familiar with the trail where Ireland was found.
On Monday, attorneys called for a federal investigation into why police did not arrest Lauro, saying there was probable cause. In the filing, he asked police and prosecutors to stop all communication about the decision not to request an arrest warrant after the DNA from Lauro’s fork was tested. They also want to know why he wasn’t arrested before or after police took DNA swabs.
A 2023 petition filed to free Schweitzer, the last of three Native Hawaiians to remain in prison for the murders, cited the case, which is one of Hawaii’s most notorious.
Ireland, who was 23 years old and came from Virginia, was found barely alive in the bushes along a fishing road in Puna, a remote part of the island. She had been sexually assaulted and beaten, and later died at Hilo Medical Center. The bike he was riding had lost a few miles (kilometers) and appeared to have been hit by a vehicle.
The murder remained unsolved for years.
A man named Frank Pauline Jr., who claimed to have witnessed the attack, told police that Schweitzer and his brother, Shawn Schweitzer, attacked and killed Ireland. But he was interviewed at least seven times and gave an inconsistent account each time, eventually incriminating himself, leading to the prosecution of Pauline as well as Schweitzer.
Pauline and Ian Schweitzer were convicted in 2000. Shawn Schweitzer took an agreement to plead guilty to murder and kidnapping — and received credit for about a year served and five years of probation — after watching a jury convict Pauline and her brother in 2000.
Pauline died in prison while serving time for Ireland’s murder, HawaiiNewsNow reported. A posthumous release for Pauline was delayed earlier this year as lawyers waited for an official copy of her death certificate, according to HawaiiNewsNow.
The Schweitzer brothers are “happy that this guy was finally caught,” said Lawson, director of the Hawaii Innocence project. “He’s disappointed in the way things turned out.”
