The Promise

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Speaker 6 My mother was an incredibly beautiful soul.

Speaker 6 What she had was charisma.

Speaker 6 She said, I love you.

Speaker 7 In my heart, I knew.

Speaker 8 Those were her last words.

Speaker 9 Two sisters with a single purpose solved the mystery of their mother's death.

Speaker 6 We can't let this go. It's heartbreaking.

Speaker 9 She left for Hawaii, a new life with a new husband. But the sunny paradise soon grew dark.

Speaker 11 Something was very wrong.

Speaker 6 It was horrible being so helpless.

Speaker 9 What was behind their mom's strange death? They set out together to discover the answer, and they were about to get some help from their mother herself.

Speaker 7 There it was, evidence she left for you to find.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 9 A possible clue hidden in an envelope marked baby pictures, but tucked inside, a journal that painted a different picture entirely.

Speaker 6 They pulled out that envelope, and that was like,

Speaker 14 wow.

Speaker 9 Could their mom help them solve her own mystery?

Speaker 6 We can't quit. We are her voice.
We made a promise.

Speaker 6 We made a promise to our mom.

Speaker 9 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Tonight, Keith Morrison with the promise.

Speaker 17 Here they were again,

Speaker 19 two sisters on a holiday in paradise, or so the other vacationers must have assumed here in America's mid-Pacific garden in the lush resort near Honolulu.

Speaker 11 But they would be wrong.

Speaker 24 This journey has more to do with a personal hell than any paradise.

Speaker 27 That and a long-ago promise to their mother.

Speaker 7 Could you have believed that you would be sitting here in this hotel room talking about this subject in the year 2014?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 6 It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 6 I could have never seen this coming.

Speaker 28 Perhaps it is pretty crazy.

Speaker 29 But there is apparently no stopping them.

Speaker 30 These tenacious sisters, Timey Cocard and Tiffany Young.

Speaker 6 There is no halfway when it comes to

Speaker 6 a promise. It's either all or nothing.

Speaker 22 Bizarre story?

Speaker 13 Oh yes, it is.

Speaker 29 At the center of it is a woman named Shirlene Van Gundy, a beauty queen once, back in Colorado.

Speaker 12 A girl who loved to dance and wear high heels. She was popular and unpredictable and kind of exciting long before she became the effervescent mother of Tammy and Tiffany.

Speaker 6 My mother was an incredibly beautiful soul. She taught both my sister and I that there was nothing that we couldn't do.

Speaker 14 Hi!

Speaker 14 I love you.

Speaker 6 My earliest memories of her

Speaker 20 are

Speaker 6 her singing to me. She loved to sing and she played with me.

Speaker 6 She was a big kid.

Speaker 7 What was that like for you?

Speaker 6 Oh, like I was the only child in the world. Like I was her full focus and attention.
My mother was a free spirit in many ways and didn't have a lot of rules.

Speaker 6 I didn't have to do things like normal kids had to do, like brush my teeth all the time.

Speaker 6 But I liked it that way.

Speaker 23 And so it was often Tammy, and not her mother, who took on the responsible role with little sister Tiffany, which was the other side of Shirleen's manic exuberance.

Speaker 6 She was unstable, and

Speaker 6 she had a hard time taking care of herself, much less anyone else.

Speaker 36 Unstable.

Speaker 6 She would have the highs of highs and the lows of lows.

Speaker 11 Moods.

Speaker 36 Very dark ones sometimes, said the girls.

Speaker 14 She didn't really

Speaker 6 admit that there was an issue. It was a hot button.
Yeah. And it wasn't something that you wanted to bring up unless you were ready for the fight.

Speaker 19 When Shirlene left the girl's father, Tammy refused to go with her.

Speaker 6 I said, I'm not going.

Speaker 6 I can't leave. I can't leave my dad.

Speaker 7 What did that feel like?

Speaker 6 Like my heart was being ripped in two.

Speaker 24 The girls lived apart for years after that, until their father won custody of Tiffany too.

Speaker 39 And then the girls watched and loved and worried about their mother, mostly from afar.

Speaker 42 And then, late 80s, Shirlene finally found real happiness when she met and married a man named Ken Wakisaka.

Speaker 6 She was, I've never been with a man who really got me.

Speaker 6 He gets me. She in her whole life, I think, had never felt so quite thoroughly and utterly embraced by someone who loved her just the the way she was.

Speaker 45 And just because Shirleen had dreamed of living in Hawaii, Ken got a job here and moved her to this condominium complex by a golf course on the Pacific.

Speaker 6 He was a very likable guy. Sure.

Speaker 6 Very much a gentleman, always opened the door for you.

Speaker 46 The sisters grew up, made lives of their own.

Speaker 22 Tiffany moved to Arizona.

Speaker 18 Tammy settled in Northern California.

Speaker 46 And for a whole decade, Shirlene seemed so happy with Ken.

Speaker 7 When did it change?

Speaker 6 It seemed to start to change in 1998.

Speaker 19 Shirlene told the girls that she and Ken were fighting.

Speaker 35 Mid-1999, she called them, very upset.

Speaker 27 And when they went to Hawaii to see what was wrong, she said the strangest thing, asked them to promise her something.

Speaker 6 And she said, promise me, if anything ever happens to me, you will investigate. And we said, Mom, what are you talking about if anything happens to you?

Speaker 6 Just promise me, she said.

Speaker 29 Jolene left Ken soon after that, moved to the mainland. The girls thought the break was permanent.

Speaker 32 We're relieved, actually.

Speaker 29 But seven months later.

Speaker 6 She said, back in Hawaii, and I'm back living with Ken and everything's fine. I don't want you to worry.

Speaker 47 But worry, they did.

Speaker 6 She would call me, and we would talk about things.

Speaker 6 And then she would call me again an hour later, and she wouldn't remember anything we talked about.

Speaker 13 It got so that Tammy sometimes didn't pick up when her mother called.

Speaker 44 But of course she had no idea what was about to happen.

Speaker 23 Least of all one April night in 2000.

Speaker 6 My mom had started calling my house and I was letting it go to the voicemail. And all the messages were pretty much the same that she loved me, she'd found God, everything was fine.

Speaker 35 Tammy waited until morning to call back.

Speaker 32 It was April 5th.

Speaker 6 And Ken answered the phone. And he said, I don't know what's wrong with your mother.
Here, you talk to her. I said, hi, mom, it's Tammy.
I said, are you okay?

Speaker 6 And she said,

Speaker 6 I love you. Her words were very drawn out and slurred, like I'd never heard before.

Speaker 7 What was that like? A conversation for you at your end?

Speaker 20 Oh,

Speaker 6 I was in a panic.

Speaker 35 In a panic, Tammy called Tiffany to tell her, and still frantic, Tammy then called the Honolulu Police Department.

Speaker 22 It was 6 a.m. there.

Speaker 19 She got an ambulance dispatched to the condo.

Speaker 6 My sister is the hero. She's saving my mother's life right now.

Speaker 6 And it's the ambulance. Like,

Speaker 6 they're the professionals. They're going to...

Speaker 11 They'll fix it.

Speaker 6 They're going to fix it.

Speaker 21 But the paramedics didn't notice much to fix.

Speaker 43 The report states, patient was conscious but under emotional distress.

Speaker 18 She appeared calm but would not acknowledge our presence.

Speaker 26 Her spouse informed us she may have taken some a leave aspirin with two beers.

Speaker 40 The report continues.

Speaker 21 There were no empty containers of beer, no odor of alcohol on the patient. We were also informed by spouse that the patient had said she was dying.

Speaker 48 Very unusual indeed.

Speaker 40 But the EMTs did not take Shirlene to the hospital, left her at home with Ken instead.

Speaker 6 How is it possible? How is it possible?

Speaker 8 This was horrible.

Speaker 6 It was horrible, being so helpless.

Speaker 27 Tiffany was so far away, on the mainland, in a panic, trying to reach her mother, calling repeatedly.

Speaker 40 Ken finally answered the phone.

Speaker 6 Here, I'll put you on with her. You can talk to her.
She said, I love you, and

Speaker 6 it was so hard for her to say it because the mere effort of moving her lips

Speaker 6 took so much.

Speaker 23 Eight long hours passed, and then at 2 p.m., Ken called 911.

Speaker 22 They rushed her to the emergency emergency room, did what they could.

Speaker 32 Nothing worked.

Speaker 39 Ken called Tammy from the hospital.

Speaker 13 Tammy broke the news to Tiffany.

Speaker 6 It went from, you know, just being in this place of such utter desperation and helplessness and despair and uncertainty, like,

Speaker 6 and knowing in my heart that she was gone.

Speaker 40 Though still barely hanging on on life support.

Speaker 34 And that's when it began.

Speaker 33 With that first rush to their respective airports for flights to Honolulu.

Speaker 42 No idea how long that journey would be.

Speaker 23 How hard that promise to keep.

Speaker 9 What had happened to their mom? When we come back, the sisters start their own investigation.

Speaker 7 Most people would just leave it to a police department to do the investigating.

Speaker 11 Not you two. No.

Speaker 9 And they find a possible clue from their mother herself.

Speaker 6 She said, if anything ever is to happen to me, I want you to ask for your baby pictures. Remember that, okay? Just remember that.

Speaker 21 Six anxiety-filled hours.

Speaker 3 On the long plane ride to Hawaii, all sisters Tammy and Tiffany knew.

Speaker 22 was that their mom was on life support.

Speaker 46 They weren't sure why or even exactly what happened to her.

Speaker 41 But during those six hours, they had plenty of time to reflect on what she said to them nine months earlier.

Speaker 6 Promise me you'll investigate. If anything happens to me, you'll find out what happened.

Speaker 27 They'd promised, of course.

Speaker 53 So even before they got on the plane for Hawaii, they called the police to report that they already had their suspicions.

Speaker 2 And those suspicions, even then, were all about Shirleen's husband, Ken Wakisaka.

Speaker 54 I heard from Tiffany before I even went to St. Francis West.

Speaker 54 I was assigned the case by my lieutenant, and

Speaker 54 he said, before you go, call this girl.

Speaker 41 Tiffany told Detective Nick Cambra about her pre-flight conversation with the hospital.

Speaker 6 I asked the emergency room attendant, I'll never forget this.

Speaker 6 I said,

Speaker 6 Where's Ken?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 56 he said

Speaker 6 he went home to feed the dogs. I said, so she's there by herself.

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 15 who does that?

Speaker 37 By the time Detective Camber got to the hospital, he'd been told what Tammy and Tiffany suspected.

Speaker 50 That Shirleen had taken or had been given an overdose of pills.

Speaker 29 He also heard from medical personnel.

Speaker 25 They thought Ken's behavior seemed strange.

Speaker 23 Though no one, including the ambulance driver, could quite say why.

Speaker 54 He also related that the husband was acting suspicious.

Speaker 33 Did he say how?

Speaker 54 He said just the way he spoke and the way he acted.

Speaker 32 Suspicious? Yes.

Speaker 26 When Detective Canberra heard that Ken left the hospital while his wife was lying in a coma in the ICU, he wondered, was Ken going home to cover up a crime scene?

Speaker 13 And when Camber checked to see if Ken had a record of any crime, he discovered, yes, he did.

Speaker 55 I did pull police reports of Ken.

Speaker 54 Ken had been arrested for abuse.

Speaker 32 It gave Cambert pause, made him consider what he'd already heard from Tiffany.

Speaker 54 That her mom had said she would never commit suicide and that she was afraid that Ken was trying to kill her prior to this incident.

Speaker 23 Now, in Hawaii, at their mother's bed in the ICU, Tammy and Tiffany vowed to find out exactly what happened to their mother.

Speaker 7 You know, most people would just leave it to a police department to do the investigating.

Speaker 7 Not you two.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 49 First target, Ken and Shirleen's condo.

Speaker 23 Must be evidence there, they decided.

Speaker 13 So they made up a story for Ken, told him they needed a rest after their long flight.

Speaker 40 Could they borrow a bed in the condo?

Speaker 36 And sure enough, he gave them the keys.

Speaker 21 Well, he stayed at Shirlene's bedside in the hospital.

Speaker 7 When he was there, what did you guys do?

Speaker 6 We went to the house in Coalina.

Speaker 7 To do what?

Speaker 6 To see what we could find.

Speaker 31 Just kind of look in cupboards and underbeds and closets for what kind of stuff.

Speaker 6 For things that we thought that might help us figure out what happened that day.

Speaker 20 Because Shirleene sounded so out of it on the phone and can mention pills to the EMTs.

Speaker 26 Tammy wondered if her mother took pills.

Speaker 13 In fact, the hospital was treating it as an overdose.

Speaker 21 But the sisters did not believe she would do it deliberately.

Speaker 48 So they went looking for those pill bottles.

Speaker 6 We had looked through the house and couldn't find them.

Speaker 6 And so we were out in the backyard just looking. And sure enough.

Speaker 7 In the backyard?

Speaker 6 Underneath the bush.

Speaker 44 As if they'd been hidden there or what?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 34 In their minds, only one person could have hidden them.

Speaker 20 Ken.

Speaker 44 Later, as Tiffany and Tabby were about to drive away from the condom, having thrown in the back seat a sealed envelope Ken had left out for them, Suddenly Tiffany remembered something else her mother told her.

Speaker 6 She says, Tiff,

Speaker 6 I have have to tell you something, and it's important. And she said, if anything ever is to happen to me, I want you to ask Ken for your baby pictures.

Speaker 6 Remember that, okay? Just remember that.

Speaker 13 And sure enough, that appeared to be what Ken had just given them.

Speaker 39 They tore open the envelope, and inside?

Speaker 13 Most definitely not baby pictures.

Speaker 42 Coming up.

Speaker 7 There it was. Evidence she left for you to find.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 9 What could be a revealing clue from their mom and a revealing chat with Ken?

Speaker 49 What did he say in that telephone conversation?

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 56 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

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Speaker 27 Sisters Tiffany and Tammy read transfixed the contents of an envelope prepared by their mother for them and clearly marked marked baby pictures.

Speaker 23 But that is not what was in the envelope.

Speaker 35 Instead, they found notes written by Ken, apparently an assignment for an anger management class.

Speaker 6 It was actually a journal about all the different ways that he had abused her.

Speaker 37 I have spit at Shirlene.

Speaker 48 I have yelled at Shirlene.

Speaker 12 I have pushed Shirlene.

Speaker 7 There it was in his own hand.

Speaker 7 Evidence she left for you to find.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 53 And suddenly, their sisters truly believed their mom was sending secret clues that almost screamed, open in case of death.

Speaker 35 Attempting to solve the mystery, they found a willing ally in Detective Cambera.

Speaker 10 One plan they came up with together?

Speaker 24 Secretly recording a phone call with Ken.

Speaker 42 Tammy made the call from the police department.

Speaker 19 The strategy was for Tammy to act friendly, supportive.

Speaker 15 Hello. Ken? Yes.

Speaker 35 Hi, it's Tammy.

Speaker 25 Ken told told Tammy he was deeply concerned for Shirleen.

Speaker 2 But Ken also said he was suspicious of Tammy and her sister.

Speaker 7 The feeling I'm getting is like, I feel like, you know, you're gonna, you're you're gonna plan on ganging up on me and and it sounds like you're gonna maybe sue me for manslaughter or something or murder.

Speaker 26 Still, he spoke with Tammy at length about the day.

Speaker 25 He said Shirleen told him she took pills and seemed suicidal.

Speaker 6 She said she wanted to die.

Speaker 58 Yeah, she did say something like, it's not working.

Speaker 54 It's not working. It's not working? Yeah, like for her to die.

Speaker 58 She's saying, it's not working.

Speaker 13 And then, after a pause, he volunteered something that shocked them all.

Speaker 13 I guess I don't want to say it, but she did say, choke me so I could die.

Speaker 58 She said that? Yeah.

Speaker 58 She said, please choke me.

Speaker 6 Oh, Ken, didn't you think that at that point that you should call the ambulance?

Speaker 58 No, because I thought she was just being disillusional. I was really scared.

Speaker 34 But then he returned to the point he made before.

Speaker 58 I haven't choked her. There's no, you know, choking marks around her neck.

Speaker 20 Right. Or you can have the doctors check that out.

Speaker 7 What a strange thing for him to say.

Speaker 6 He said a lot of strange things.

Speaker 32 Now the girls believed they had to move very fast.

Speaker 13 Well, Shirlene was on life support.

Speaker 35 As long as she was alive, they decided.

Speaker 49 They had the legal right to rummage through a garage in a house in California Shirlene had kept, looking for evidence to use against Ken.

Speaker 29 So they flew to the mainland.

Speaker 23 And that's where they were, when Ken gave consent to take Shirlene off life support.

Speaker 49 And she died.

Speaker 6 I remember thinking, I'm just bawling my head off again.

Speaker 6 So I was mortified and I was devastated again that I wasn't there.

Speaker 19 At Shirlene's funeral, according to Detective Nick Cambra, Ken's eulogy sounded like a well-prepared criminal defense.

Speaker 54 He started with that Shirlene initiated sex the night before,

Speaker 54 that she was happy that they were together.

Speaker 54 And then he started, he went on to the next day and how he tried to prevent her from dying.

Speaker 32 Shirlene's daughters were horrified.

Speaker 19 Now they were fully determined to keep their promise to their mother.

Speaker 23 They'd need to ensure that Ken was charged with her murder.

Speaker 19 Next to look at the case, prosecutor Dan Oyosato, who found Ken's remarks about strangulation very disturbing.

Speaker 44 And here's why.

Speaker 59 This was viewed as an overdose. That's how this case went to the hospital.
That's what Tiffany and Tammy were thinking.

Speaker 59 That's what the police department was thinking.

Speaker 41 And yet, as Oyosato began to dig deeper, he found that Ken talked about strangulation more than once.

Speaker 59 He brought it up with the medical examiner's investigator

Speaker 59 and was basically telling them this is not

Speaker 59 a strangulation case.

Speaker 50 In fact, said the prosecutor, Ken tried to persuade the examiner not to do an autopsy.

Speaker 32 But, of course, there was one.

Speaker 22 The result took months, but sure enough, cause of death, said the medical examiner, brain damage due to ligature strangulation.

Speaker 37 When an arrest warrant was issued, Detective Camera served it personally.

Speaker 60 Police arrested 45-year-old Kenneth Wakisaka tonight. Prosecutors say he strangled his 52-year-old wife last April.
Tonight, police charged him with murder in the second degree.

Speaker 7 How did he react?

Speaker 54 He said, Nick, you know, I didn't kill my wife. I didn't kill my wife.

Speaker 1 In 2002, two years after their mother's death, Tammy and Tiffany came back to Hawaii, this time to the courthouse, where Ken Wakisaka went on trial for murder.

Speaker 6 He took the life of another human being, and that human being was our mother.

Speaker 59 This was a murder by strangulation. It was domestic violence at its ultimate.

Speaker 19 In his opening statement, prosecutor Dan Oyasato quoted from Ken's own statements to accuse him of murder.

Speaker 59 Can you tell if a person has been strangled during autopsy?

Speaker 59 These are the words of the defendant to an investigator from the medical examiner's office.

Speaker 19 In court, the medical examiner repeated her opinion that Shirlene was strangled, said she found ligature marks on her neck.

Speaker 42 And in court, the prosecutor played a tape of that recorded phone call with Tammy, in which, sure enough, Ken brought up the idea himself.

Speaker 42 I guess I don't want to say it, but she did say, choked me so I could die.

Speaker 59 I really believe this was Ken's subconscious

Speaker 59 talking out.

Speaker 11 No one,

Speaker 59 not a soul, was thinking this was a strangulation case.

Speaker 3 Until he opened his mouth and

Speaker 13 made everybody suspicious.

Speaker 59 Every witness who testified as to having some contact with Ken

Speaker 59 spoke about his unusual behavior. His focus was not on his wife.
It was on other things.

Speaker 20 But there is always a but.

Speaker 19 Ken's defense attorney, Mal Gillen, accused the police and prosecutors of jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Speaker 36 rushing to judgment against Ken.

Speaker 27 That ligature mark must have been made by the tube that lay on her neck while she was on life support.

Speaker 19 This wasn't a strangulation, he argued.

Speaker 27 It wasn't a murder at all.

Speaker 25 As Ken had said all along, Shirlene took an overdose.

Speaker 61 Mrs. Wakisaka,

Speaker 61 because of her various mental disorders or defects, committed suicide.

Speaker 37 The trial lasted two weeks. The jury heard detectives, doctors, Shirlene's daughters, of course.

Speaker 49 Ken himself chose not to take the stand.

Speaker 7 How's it seemed to be going?

Speaker 6 It seemed to be going well.

Speaker 36 As if here, their promise would be kept.

Speaker 13 But life, as everybody knows, is full of surprises.

Speaker 9 Coming up, the verdict would be swift, but the real stunner was what came after.

Speaker 31 Nobody stood up and said, I object.

Speaker 33 It's amazing.

Speaker 59 It haunts me. I'll tell you right now, it haunts me.

Speaker 13 Two tenacious daughters made a promise to their mother and were hoping to keep it.

Speaker 40 But now it was up to 12 other people, a jury.

Speaker 7 Were you in the court when the verdict was read?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 7 Tell me about that.

Speaker 6 What a huge relief to hear those words. We, the jury, find Ken Wakisaka guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 6 It was amazing.

Speaker 29 Ken was, well, surprise would be an understatement.

Speaker 7 I didn't expect this at all.

Speaker 27 But these two.

Speaker 6 I was a really happy girl. You know, I'm like, the system worked, you know, it worked.

Speaker 21 Ken, who still maintained his innocence, was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 20 And that would be it.

Speaker 47 End of story.

Speaker 49 Except, coincidence is such a strange and powerful thing, isn't it?

Speaker 13 It's a curious story, the way you encountered this case, huh?

Speaker 55 Yes, I was visiting another client who had been charged with murder.

Speaker 23 Defense Attorney John Edmonds doesn't normally find new cases in prison, but something seemed very credible about this particular client referral.

Speaker 55 He turned to me and he said, you know, my cellmate, who's out in the wreckyard right now, doesn't belong here. There's something really odd about his case.

Speaker 55 Would you look at the edit and see what you think?

Speaker 32 So Edmonds agreed to at least have a look at the record.

Speaker 41 A thick file of transcripts, hundreds of pages.

Speaker 44 And late one night, he was sitting up in bed beside his wife, reading every word said at Ken's trial.

Speaker 20 And suddenly, there it was, Eureka.

Speaker 55 And I get to the final argument, and the prosecutor...

Speaker 55 makes a direct comment on Mr. Wakasaka's failure to take the witness stand.

Speaker 24 This is what Edmonds read.

Speaker 23 It's in Prosecutor Dan Oyasato's final argument, his own words.

Speaker 44 Who was alone with her?

Speaker 23 He was alone with her.

Speaker 37 He was there.

Speaker 35 He would know.

Speaker 23 If he doesn't tell us, we can only look to Shirlene and see what her body tells us.

Speaker 55 The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination is... a constitutional right that can be rendered meaningless if the prosecution gets to comment on it.

Speaker 33 And nobody stood up and said, I object.

Speaker 55 It's amazing.

Speaker 55 The trial lawyer said nothing. The judge said nothing.

Speaker 27 Those five words, if he doesn't tell us, would be the basis for Edmund's appeal.

Speaker 55 The most serious offense is commenting on the failure to take the witness stand. But we're supposed to be professionals and we're not supposed to make those kinds of mistakes.

Speaker 7 Did you write your closing argument?

Speaker 59 I write an outline. I commit it to memory.

Speaker 7 So how did that line come out?

Speaker 21 Prosecutor Dan Oyasato said it it was a mere slip of the tongue.

Speaker 59 What I was trying to do with that statement was actually transition from if he doesn't know,

Speaker 59 then we need to look at her body. We need to look at the rest of the evidence to tell us the story.

Speaker 21 None of this seemed like such a big deal to Shirleene's daughters.

Speaker 6 People file appeals all the time, I understand that, but I wasn't paying attention anymore because it was done.

Speaker 13 Oh, but it wasn't done.

Speaker 36 In 2003, a year after the trial and three years since Shirleen's death, Hawaii Supreme Court handed down its decision.

Speaker 6 I got the call from Dan

Speaker 6 Oisato, the prosecutor, and she said the verdict's been overturned.

Speaker 20 Overturned?

Speaker 37 The guilty verdict the daughters so desperately wanted pulled out from under them.

Speaker 51 Just like that.

Speaker 6 Because it wasn't the evidence of the case. It was on the Fifth Amendment.
It was... Prosecutorial misconduct.
That's my fault. So he took responsibility for it right away.
Instantly. Instantly.

Speaker 6 The pain, the pain that he felt because he worked so hard.

Speaker 59 It haunts me. I'll tell you right now, it haunts me, you know,

Speaker 59 that I did this. I have apologized, I don't know how many times, to the girls because of my error.

Speaker 32 Still, said the sisters, the ruling didn't mean Ken was innocent. Far from it.

Speaker 6 Even though the verdict was overturned,

Speaker 6 It was overturned on technicalities and not on any evidentiary issues.

Speaker 32 And they found a small silver lining.

Speaker 13 The Supreme Court said Ken could be retried.

Speaker 6 And so that left the door open for us to bring it back to trial. And we just needed to try it again.

Speaker 39 And so they took it upon themselves to pick up right where they left off.

Speaker 29 After all, a promise is a promise.

Speaker 6 I just remember thinking,

Speaker 62 okay,

Speaker 6 so we need to keep pushing. Or you can't quit.
Because there is no other option, because you can make a difference.

Speaker 35 Ken got out on bail, but was still under indictment for murder.

Speaker 37 And they all waited for the new trial.

Speaker 23 And then, once again, John Edmonds put on his reading glasses.

Speaker 55 And what I found again stunned me.

Speaker 9 Coming up.

Speaker 62 I went over to talk to the EMT.

Speaker 9 A possible new witness with a very different story to tell.

Speaker 62 I couldn't believe it. I still don't believe it.

Speaker 9 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 9 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 4 It's Rob Lowe here.

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Speaker 38 Ken Walkie Sucker, convicted of killing his wife Shirlene, was out on bail.

Speaker 27 Guilty verdict overturned.

Speaker 23 Thanks to an error discovered by Ken's new defense attorney, John Edmonds.

Speaker 29 But Edmonds wasn't finished digging.

Speaker 8 And pretty soon he found another error, a big one, that occurred even before the trial.

Speaker 55 There was a witness that the grand jury had asked to be called, whom the prosecution didn't call.

Speaker 26 Thing is, it's an ironclad rule.

Speaker 19 If a grand jury asked to hear from a witness, the prosecution must comply.

Speaker 28 Didn't in this case.

Speaker 22 It wasn't a minor witness either, said Edmonds, but someone in a position to know a great deal about what really happened to Shirleen.

Speaker 55 The Waukasakas had an upstairs room that they rented out to a guy, and he had been there and seen a lot of what went on that morning.

Speaker 31 Though the grand jury didn't hear from the roommate, Detective Nick Camber

Speaker 3 did. Camera asked him, what did Shirleene say to Ken on the day she died?

Speaker 31 The defense provided us with an excerpt of Detective Camera's interview with the witness.

Speaker 52 She was asking Ken to come here, you know, be by my side.

Speaker 31 She did say she wanted to die in peace.

Speaker 24 Testimony that seemed very much in Ken's favor.

Speaker 3 Testimony the grand jury that indicted him never heard. Defense Attorney Edmonds again went to court, and again, he won.

Speaker 12 So tell me, from a practical point of view, what did those victories mean for Ken?

Speaker 55 Well, from a practical point of view, it meant that indictment got dismissed.

Speaker 21 Dismissed as if he'd never been charged in the first place.

Speaker 26 Ken was no longer free on bail.

Speaker 48 He was simply free.

Speaker 59 And now we're back to a point as though the case never was brought in the first place.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 59 that's frustrating.

Speaker 6 How do you get your head around it? How do you process all of it? How do you move forward every day?

Speaker 21 How would they make the case against Ken and persuade the state to start from scratch?

Speaker 38 Ken's story had never changed, that Shirlene killed herself accidentally or on purpose with an overdose of pills.

Speaker 38 Of course, the state still had evidence, like that pill bottle the sisters said they found stashed in the backyard of the condo, as if Ken fed the pills to Shirlene, then tried to hide the bottle from the police.

Speaker 29 But Defense Attorney Edmonds could show Ken didn't try to hide anything, that in fact he took paramedics to the medicine cabinet himself.

Speaker 55 They counted down tablets in a bottle of pills to see how many were left and tried to figure out how many she'd taken, which is what she said she had done.

Speaker 12 And there was a potential new defense witness who knew Shirlene well, didn't like her at all, in fact.

Speaker 34 And she has her own strange theory about what happened to Shirlene.

Speaker 13 You get to know the people who are living in your building.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Marjorie Collier managed the condominium complex where Shirlene and Ken lived.

Speaker 35 Unlike the daughters, Marjorie considered Shirlene the dominant, even abusive force in the marriage.

Speaker 62 She used to tell me that Ken was the complete opposite of her.

Speaker 62 that he was very quiet and he would never argue with her or get into a fight with her. He'd leave the building.
He'd just go for a walk.

Speaker 37 How did she feel about that?

Speaker 62 She didn't like it.

Speaker 18 Marjorie was on the scene April 5th, 2000, after Tammy called 911, urging EMTs to check on her mother.

Speaker 62 I went over to talk to the EMT,

Speaker 62 and he said, well, she's awake and she's coherent enough to tell us that she's not coming with us.

Speaker 62 And I said, oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Remember, in the official EMT report, it was Ken who said Shirleen didn't need to go to the hospital.

Speaker 27 But Marjorie Marjorie insisted, and EMT told her it was Shirlene who refused to go.

Speaker 7 So your memory of that's pretty clear?

Speaker 62 I'm positive.

Speaker 7 When you heard that Ken was accused of strangling her.

Speaker 62 I was absolutely shocked. I couldn't believe it.
I still don't believe it.

Speaker 22 But what does she believe about how Shirlene died?

Speaker 13 Well, just her speculation, of course.

Speaker 34 It was based on an incident that began, she said, when Shirlene was making a fuss in the condo office.

Speaker 62 And she was being very pushy, and I went to shut the door just to get her to go home because I wasn't even open yet.

Speaker 62 And the door hit her arm, and she spilled her cup of coffee.

Speaker 18 Next thing Marjorie knew, a police officer was threatening to arrest her.

Speaker 62 And I said, for what?

Speaker 62 And he says, for abuse.

Speaker 62 I said, excuse me?

Speaker 62 And I looked at Shirlene and from her thigh, mid-thigh, all the way down to her feet, was burned.

Speaker 62 Severely burned. More burned than you get laying out in the sun all day.
Was it from that coffee?

Speaker 62 That's what she said it was, but the police officer told me one cup of coffee won't burn both those legs like that.

Speaker 32 Both legs are burned. Yeah.

Speaker 62 But she burned her own legs.

Speaker 23 In that case, Marjorie believed, Shirlene was willing to hurt herself just to frame Marjorie.

Speaker 25 So, when Shirlene died?

Speaker 62 What I thought, honestly,

Speaker 62 was that it was another ploy.

Speaker 62 And she had tried to make it look as if he was trying to kill her, and she went too far and accidentally killed herself.

Speaker 6 I think that that's Marjorie's perspective. Do I think that she's correct in her opinion? No.

Speaker 6 Absolutely not.

Speaker 21 To Shirleen's daughters, there was still no doubt about what really happened and what to do about it.

Speaker 23 I think your mother had a word, didn't she, that she liked.

Speaker 7 What was that word?

Speaker 6 Tenacity. I just had to keep going.
And here's the thing about keeping going. By doing something in the process, I was honoring her.

Speaker 37 Tiffany filled a suitcase with documents that some prosecutor might find useful, hauled it back and forth at prosecution meetings, pushing for action for years.

Speaker 6 Well, I kept going to Hawaii, for sure. I'm like, pardon, hi, it's me again.

Speaker 6 My mom, what's going on with my mom's case?

Speaker 18 By this time, Dan Oyasato no longer worked at the Honolulu County Prosecutor's Office.

Speaker 20 And the prosecutor who took over the case seemed reluctant to go forward.

Speaker 49 But that wasn't going to stop Shirleen's daughters.

Speaker 20 Not for one minute.

Speaker 6 We had a guilty verdict. We need to move forward.
We need to recharge. We need to reindict.
We need to go back to trial.

Speaker 21 But, it turned out a big surprise was coming.

Speaker 40 This time from the prosecution.

Speaker 42 Coming up.

Speaker 9 A whole new theory of the case. A change for prosecutors.

Speaker 55 A challenge for that promise.

Speaker 12 How long are you prepared to keep going with this?

Speaker 6 As long as it takes. We made a promise.

Speaker 12 April 2014.

Speaker 34 Tiffany and Tabby returned to Hawaii, where they marked a painful anniversary.

Speaker 12 14 years since their mother Shirleen died.

Speaker 6 It's heartbreaking.

Speaker 7 Why do you say heartbreaking?

Speaker 6 We've spent all these years trying to get justice. We made the promise to my mother that we investigate.
Therefore, it has to be. Therefore, you can't quit.

Speaker 40 The daughters thought they'd made good on their promise to find justice for their mother if anything happened to her.

Speaker 32 when Shirlene's husband was convicted in 2002 of murder by strangulation.

Speaker 41 But that verdict was overturned in 2003, and then Ken's original indictment was thrown out two years later.

Speaker 7 You thought maybe a few months and he'd back in court.

Speaker 6 Not a few months, I thought within a few years.

Speaker 46 But the years just kept passing.

Speaker 36 Ken has moved on, though he still lives in the same condo.

Speaker 2 But Tammy and Tiffany told us they can't move on, and they acknowledged it's been hard on them.

Speaker 6 I feel really bad for my family because it's not their mother. They didn't make the promise I did.
It's because every time I'm not there, someone else has to cover all the things that I normally do.

Speaker 21 Tiffany especially makes the trip to Hawaii repeatedly.

Speaker 26 And kids and husband know they're on their own whenever she rolls out the suitcase stuffed with case papers.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's the signal. There simply is no other room in those moments for much of anything else.

Speaker 32 Still, they push on.

Speaker 6 We will get a conviction, and I will do everything I can possibly do in order to make that happen.

Speaker 38 The case has dogged Detective Nick Cambert, too.

Speaker 23 He's retired now, but he counts the years and wonders.

Speaker 7 Do you perceive enthusiasm in the prosecutor's office to go after this? Not at all. They would do so reluctantly.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 20 But why?

Speaker 35 If prosecutors won a conviction once, why not just do it again?

Speaker 59 At this point, it's not my decision. But what I can say is, provided the evidence was not suppressed and is still available, there is more than ample evidence to prove his guilt.

Speaker 39 Anticipating a new trial, Defense Attorney Edmonds hired renowned forensic pathologist Michael Botton.

Speaker 55 And asked him, what is your opinion? Was there strangulation or not? He said, absolutely not. He said, this is just wrong.

Speaker 17 So the new prosecution hired its own experts and, well, didn't go as planned.

Speaker 55 The new prosecutor on the case said that they had a one or two forensic pathologists who agreed with Dr. Bodden.

Speaker 2 They agreed that Shirleen wasn't strangled.

Speaker 7 But these are prosecution experts. Did that surprise you?

Speaker 6 It did.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I don't think that they provided all the information that the expert needed in order to make that determination.

Speaker 44 The prosecution announced in court in 2010 it was abandoning the strangulation theory, the very theory that got Ken convicted in the first place.

Speaker 7 What did you think when they just dropped that theory?

Speaker 6 I was shocked.

Speaker 6 Honestly, I was shocked.

Speaker 21 The current prosecutor declined to talk with us or share any information about the case, but in an email to the Daughters from January 2014, he said his boss, the chief prosecuting attorney, referred to here by his initials KMK,

Speaker 24 gave the green light to go forward.

Speaker 15 Go forward with what?

Speaker 19 A whole new theory called murder by omission.

Speaker 31 What's your understanding of what murder by omission is?

Speaker 6 My understanding is that it's a duty of a spouse or a parent to get medical help for someone who can't get help for themselves.

Speaker 6 And if they die because of that, then you've effectively committed murder.

Speaker 10 In the email, the prosecutor told the girls he just just needed one or more experts to give the opinion that Wakisaka's failure to perform his duty to provide timely medical care for Shirleen caused her death.

Speaker 29 Despite abandoning the strangulation theory, the prosecutor in his email now said he might actually bring it back, along with murder by omission, for a possible new trial.

Speaker 7 Do you really think they will?

Speaker 6 Have they?

Speaker 11 Have they?

Speaker 62 No.

Speaker 6 They have not. They've done nothing.

Speaker 12 So, what stage have you got to?

Speaker 43 Believe it when you see it?

Speaker 6 Absolutely. Prove me wrong.
Show me that you're going to do something.

Speaker 6 Quit leading us on to believe that you're going to move forward with a case that we've been hanging on to for 10 years.

Speaker 32 Defense Attorney Edmonds said he would knock down the prosecution's new omission theory by pointing out that Ken did try to get help for Shirleen by calling 911.

Speaker 44 So far, there has been no move to charge Ken, and it's not clear when or if there will be.

Speaker 55 I don't think you can fault these two women for how they feel about the loss of their mother.

Speaker 32 They have been tenacious.

Speaker 36 Tenacious.

Speaker 32 You'd agree with that?

Speaker 55 Yes, doesn't mean they're right.

Speaker 32 Ken has maintained his innocence all these years,

Speaker 7 even as Shirleen's daughter's quest to prove him guilty goes on.

Speaker 55 He's very troubled by it.

Speaker 7 Is he living under a cloud now?

Speaker 32 He feels he is.

Speaker 55 He'll never really be at peace. Now more people recognize him on the street.
That's embarrassing.

Speaker 7 I miss her so much, Tim.

Speaker 29 I do too. Call it a promise, a quest,

Speaker 7 an obsession.

Speaker 7 Her daughter's journey isn't over.

Speaker 12 How long are you prepared to keep going with this?

Speaker 6 As long as it takes.

Speaker 7 I mean, you could be sitting here an old lady and years and years from now nothing will happen.

Speaker 6 We made a promise.

Speaker 6 We made a promise to our mom.

Speaker 6 It is with such purpose and such passion and such love that I do this. It is in honor of my mother.
And I don't care if it's labeled obsession or crazy.

Speaker 6 I'm doing this because I love her and she deserves it.

Speaker 9 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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