The Bucket Hat Mystery

What kind of man would let this happen to his family?

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Tonight on dateline.

I have so many memories of him at the beach.

Hawaii was his home, you know.

He loved to surf.

I still ask, why would somebody do that?

John Togohara's body was discovered lying in a pool of his own blood.

Somebody had shot him, shot him to death like an assassination.

It just still doesn't make sense.

There was a backpack found, a lot of cash in it.

Was he in debt to someone?

Thousands of text messages.

This is a love triangle here.

There had been an affair going on.

When I first saw the video and saw the white hat, it looked like a person trying to disguise themselves to go do a murder.

You can't see a face at all.

He had even disguised his truck.

His coding calculated, huh?

How can you sleep at night knowing what you did to John?

How could you?

You're in the dark.

Yeah, we were all in the dark.

Even your best friends have secrets, right?

Right.

High passions in Hawaii: a surfer murdered in a riptide of revenge.

I'm Lester Holt, and this is Date Live.

Here's Keith Morrison with The Bucket Hat Mystery.

Say Hawaii, and the first thing that pops to mind for many is this unmistakable place, this picture, Waikiki.

Of course, it does.

Waikiki has been photographed and filmed so many times through so many eras.

It is Hawaii for many, the image of some warm, rich fantasy.

Locals might grouse, though, that this is merely a fantasy land version of Hawaii, the tourist version.

The real thing?

Well, for that, they would tell you to see the Hawaii loved and lived in by islanders.

You need to go just 20 miles to the west to the working-class town of Waipahu in the outskirts above Pearl Harbor.

It's a small community.

Everybody knows each other.

It started off at the sugar mill.

It's one of those places where most of the friends that I have are my childhood friends.

It's an ancient place, Waipau,

a kind of regional capital long ago, before its century is a sugar plantation, and even now, generations on, its way of life runs like blood in their veins.

Elders are called auntie or uncle, and news about the town bounces around from house to house.

well before it appears on any TV newscast.

Which is what happened on Thursday, January 13th, 2022, when word flashed from person to person that the healer, the beloved local who owned this modest little acupuncture studio, was dead.

And more shocking, had been shot dead, murdered.

Elton Escobedo learned about it from a group chat.

That's how we all found out.

Do you remember the first words?

John got killed or something like that.

It was like in shock.

Yeah.

We didn't want to believe it, right?

Moses and Chetta heard about it from a fellow surfer.

I couldn't believe it.

I was like, nah, this isn't true.

This isn't true.

Nicole Trazo got the news from a friend.

He just told me that John was gone.

What was that like for you?

Earth-shattering.

Yeah.

Hard to believe.

Julie and Tolin heard about the shooting while at work.

I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe what I heard.

I said, no, no, no, they cannot be.

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

You know, I kept on saying that.

I tried to go back to work and I said, I can't do this.

I ended up driving to his office.

I saw them carrying his body out to the car and it was just too much.

It's hard to believe that that would.

I thought it was somebody.

I kept on saying, cannabi, cannabis.

And everybody just said, no, it was John.

It was John.

The victim was 47-year-old John Tokuhara.

Tokes is what they called him, who said his friend Joanna Sabas had a kind of aura about him.

I don't think we went anywhere where somebody didn't recognize John and know who John was.

He just had that personality that it was just so golden.

Which made it all the more tragic, that sudden, shocking loss.

And so very puzzling.

It was his mother who found him.

Found his body, that is.

That's her in the passenger seat of the silver SUV.

So understandably distraught, she struggled to answer basic questions.

Everything was open.

Everything was open.

Eventually, Mrs.

Tokuhara, Lily, pulled herself together and told police she last spoke to John on the phone around 6 p.m.

the night before.

They were making a plan to have dinner together, but he never showed.

And so the next morning, around 8, worried now, she drove over to her son's acupuncture studio to check on him.

And she saw the back door was open.

She went inside.

And there, crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood, was her son, John.

Investigators later found three.22-caliber shell casings scattered about the tiny office, which was cluttered, but didn't appear to have been ransacked.

And there were no signs of a fight or a struggle of any kind, making clear to police that this was a targeted killing.

We're just trying to make sense of it.

What did you know?

You know, did John talk to you last?

Or, you know, that kind of stuff.

We didn't know.

We didn't know what happened.

As we gathered with a group of John's friends, and there were many, we could see that they were still processing the what of it all as they groped for answers about why.

Everybody just trying to make sense of

the why.

The why, yeah,

what happened?

How did did it get, you know, who would want that?

Who would want to do that to John?

Who indeed?

A question that would be asked again and again by friends and investigators.

There was a backpack found and it had a lot of cash in it, like around $4,000.

Wow.

Cash.

See the arrow?

Yep.

That's our person in the bucket hat.

We now consider this female and another male to be persons of interest.

Nobody knew who they were.

Even your best friends have secrets, right?

Right.

Police, for all they tried, could find no enemies in John Tokuhara's background.

No one who was out to do him harm.

So, Steinmeat investigators were forced to turn to the public for help.

If you have information regarding this incident, whether you saw something suspicious, maybe you saw a suspicious vehicle, or someone that looked suspicious in the general area that kind of looked out of place, you know, something very minute, please just give it to us and let the detectives come through it.

All the wild flowers piled up outside the door of his clinic.

A week after the murder, there was a vigil, and it seemed like the whole town showed up.

I didn't realize how big it was going to be.

It basically took up the whole street.

It was just tons of people there, all there to just

mourn the loss of a friend.

It was amazing.

At the beach where he surfed, Friends in their hundreds gathered for a paddle-out, as they call this.

They formed a processional passage as John's ashes were delivered from the beach to the sea.

Oh, one of the most beautiful days.

I don't even know how many people were there.

Probably hundreds.

You would think that he was some kind of like

celebrity the way we had it.

I mean there was just.

But it was beautiful.

I'll never forget it.

That day I felt close to him because all of his hundreds of closest family and friends was there and it was just like he was with us.

Once out on the water, the mourners gathered in concentric circles as John's ashes were scattered across the breakers.

You know that everybody had one thing in common that speaks volume about John.

That everybody was saying, John was my best friend.

He was everybody's best friend.

He was mine, though.

Yeah.

But that's the truth.

He was everybody's best friend.

Which is what made the crime all the more incomprehensible.

He'd been such a good kid growing up in Waipahu.

He'd studied hard, excelled at sports.

He played baseball, and I played volleyball with him when he was a junior and a senior.

He helped Waipahu win the OA championship.

They won back-to-back championships.

He's a really athletic guy, very competitive.

Competitive meaning when he's on the court, hey,

he's a totally different person it's time to get down to business and get the job done after high school john moved to the mainland and graduated from the university of portland with a degree in biology he went on to get a master's in chinese medicine and acupuncture and then after being away for six years he came back to hawaii back to waipahu he would have done anything anywhere but he ended up coming back to waipahu that's his roots you know that's what it is you know waipahu is his blood born and raised

john opened his tiny acupuncture studio less than a mile from his modest apartment and his mother lily his clinic was a one-man operation where he stored both his surfboard and outrigger canoe so whenever the waves were right he'd close up shop and hit the surf a simple uncomplicated life made simpler yet by having never married, though friends he had in abundance.

I've known him for over 35 years.

He's had girlfriends.

You know, in my eyes, he's always been a serial monogamous.

But the fact was, women just loved John.

Even his ex-girlfriend stayed friends.

And yet somebody wanted him dead.

A lover scorned, possibly.

It almost looks like that he got shot and fell out of the chair onto the floor.

The shooting of John Tokuhara raised so many questions with his friends, with police, with us, that we asked retired veteran homicide detective Liz Thompson, who's investigated hundreds of murders, to give us an outsider's take on the case file.

There were visible wounds to his face,

and the casings then are within the office space.

How many show casings were there?

There were three casings that were found.

They were 22 caliber casings.

So this camera, for example.

She'd absorbed it all by the time we talked, as if she could almost see it, even though a new occupant has remodeled John Tokohara's acupuncture clinic.

Thompson showed how the killer made his or her entry into the building.

So this is the back door to the clinic.

So he would have entered here.

There have been some changes here, so I'm going to walk you through.

If you come down here, so this wasn't here, but there was a wall with this reception window encounter.

The killer would have been on that side.

It would have been on that side.

Pointing out this way.

This is where John would have been sitting approximately.

He reaches through the window and shoots him.

And John falls this way onto the floor.

Just like that.

Just like that.

While reviewing the crime scene evidence, Liz Thompson came across two curious items in John's clinic that investigators were unable to explain.

The first was a surgical mask, which John was wearing.

Still common in 2022 to protect against COVID, but why wear a mask when you were alone?

The other thing police found, and this was truly strange, under John's desk was a backpack.

And it had a lot of cash in it, like around $4,000 cash.

Which begs the question, why did John have so much cash on hand, in big bills no less?

And why did the shooter not take it?

The money, the surgical mask?

Did John have an off-the-books meeting with his killer that somehow went south?

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That backpack.

What did it mean?

$4,000 in big bills just sitting there a couple of feet from the body of an immensely popular man, a man with no known enemies, her vices, her debts,

and yet was murdered execution style.

Was the money somehow at the heart of the murder?

Was the killer after this bag of cash and just couldn't find it?

Was he in debt to somebody?

Was he in debt to somebody?

Was he in debt to a bad dude?

Exactly.

We just don't know.

Why was he there after hours sitting at the desk with a backpack full of cash?

And there was also that surgical mask John was wearing, as if he he was preparing to have a face-to-face meeting with somebody, even though he had no other appointments scheduled.

So a digital detective went through John's computers and phones to see who he was contacting prior to his murder.

The last patient of the day was a longtime friend, Kathy Tanita Ohama, who, when questioned by a deputy prosecuting attorney, said she left the clinic around 5.30 p.m.

When you left at 5.30 p.m., as far as you're aware, was there anyone else in John's office?

No.

Can you tell us what John was like that particular day when you were with him?

He was normal.

Everything was ordinary.

Did he seem agitated at all?

No.

Did he seem nervous?

No.

Did he seem depressed?

No.

After Kathy left, John texted his current girlfriend, Andy Iramata, a local school teacher.

with a cryptic message saying he had more work to do and had to make more phone calls.

30 minutes after that, around 6 p.m., is when John and his mom Lily spoke on the phone and the two made plans to have dinner together.

At 6.12 p.m., John read a text from his mom asking, shall I pack for two?

Meaning, would John be bringing his girlfriend Andy to dinner?

John replied right away, just me, Andy isn't coming.

Thanks.

At 6.15, Lily responded, okay.

John read that message, but never responded.

At 6.18 p.m., John's cell phone was unlocked, but no messages were sent.

More than two hours later, at 8.34, Lily texted John asking, are you still at the office?

Again, John did not respond, but this time the message went unread.

An hour after that, at 9.32, Lily texted, are you okay?

This message, too, went unread.

So the last person known to be in contact with John that evening, other than his mom and his last patient, Kathy, was his girlfriend, Andy Iramata.

Seen here in a Hawaii News Now story about the grammar school where she teaches.

But after reviewing case documents, retired detective Liz Thompson found Andy Iramata had what one might call a complicated backstory.

An ex-boyfriend named Daryl Fujita.

She had been dating

a man like 12 years prior,

and they had broken up because she started seeing John.

And then they broke up, and she ends up back with Daryl years later.

And again,

she starts seeing John, and she and Daryl broke up again.

So this guy's been scorned.

This is a woman who did him wrong.

Scorned twice by the same guy.

Yes, by the same guy.

This is really a person of interest.

We need to take a look at this guy.

Daryl Fujita's life was very much intertwined with his ex, Andy.

They had lived together, still owned a house together, even had a child together.

So, Daryl was questioned by police, and then much later by a deputy prosecuting attorney, insisting all along there was no bad blood between him and John.

Did you kill John Tokuhara?

No.

How did you feel about John dating Andy?

Nothing really.

It's all good, whatever.

Fujita allowed police to search his phone, but he didn't hand it over until after he put it through a factory reset.

Mr.

Vegeta, do you agree that it looks a little suspicious to change phones in the middle of a murder investigation?

Not to me, no, but to everybody else, I guess.

Well, it certainly did to retired homicide detective Liz Thompson.

I don't know why he would do that, but it's suspicious.

Yeah, no kidding.

Very suspicious.

I wouldn't recommend...

that if the police need your phone to wipe it.

That's kind of an automatic clue that there's something suspicious.

So we don't know what was on the phone that he was concerned about.

We just don't know.

Would you like to?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And I would like, as an investigator, I want an explanation that makes sense.

Nicole Trazzo has known John since childhood and Daryl Fujita for a decade or more.

Did you hear about what was happening in the investigation?

I heard some of it.

Some of our friends would hear little bits and pieces, and we would discuss it amongst ourselves.

Did they ever talk about this Daryl Fujita, or did you

hear about that one?

She had no idea, she said, that Daryl Fujita was a person of interest in John's murder investigation.

Police, though, continued to comb through John's phones and computers to see if there was anyone or

anything else of note hidden away in there.

There was

a private Instagram account with just one very attentive follower, a former patient, Joyce Thompson.

Now, we're talking thousands of messages between John and Joyce Thompson that were intimate in nature and explicit.

And this, of course, is very suspicious.

Because this woman, Joyce, was very much married.

When questioned by police, Joyce acknowledged she did have a fling with John, but it was seven months over.

It ended almost as soon as it began.

Her story matched the timeline on the Instagram account, given the flurry of messages were all jammed into a short period, two months.

John's friend Nicole said it had to be a brief romance if she never caught wind of it.

Or Joyce Thompson, did you hear about her at all?

Joyce never heard anything of her.

No.

So police continued to look into John's past.

And then my name came up.

That was a few days after the murder, I believe.

John DeMarco's wife, police learned, also had an affair with John Tokuhaura.

They asked her how they met.

So she met John as a patient.

She was getting acupuncture.

The affair ended the DeMarco's marriage, but that was 14 years ago.

DeMarco said he held no ill feelings toward John, and while his wife was questioned by police, he never was.

From what I had heard, I wasn't a suspect.

Which meant when it came to persons of interest, Daryl Fujita was still top of the list.

Until the focus turned to a mysterious person wearing,

well, it was a strange outfit for a warm day in Hawaii.

It looked like a person trying to disguise themselves to go to a murder.

They are everywhere, those unblinking robot eyes staring at us, hiding behind smoked glass domes, watching, recording everything we do.

They're all around John Tokuhara's old acupuncture clinic.

Maybe, police wondered, maybe one of them caught his killer on camera.

So they canvassed the neighborhood, collecting video, everything these cameras recorded around the time of the murder.

And then one of the investigators sat at a screen and watched for hours, looking for something.

Couldn't be sure what or who.

It's hard to do.

It's the most tedious thing because you're looking at everyday life.

Lots of traffic, lots of people walking by.

It's not very easy to do that.

I mean, there's a whole lot of video and a whole lot of time they have to watch.

And you've got to make sure that you are looking at every camera that could possibly be capturing anything because you don't know which direction this person came from.

This person being John Tokuhara's killer.

Did he or she come to the clinic on foot or by car, bicycle, bus even?

Who knew?

And then, while police were watching hours and hours of nothing in particular, A recurring character began to emerge in an almost where's Waldo sort of way.

It was a person loping along toward the clinic possibly, toting a brown paper grocery bag and wearing a floppy white hat.

It's just kind of a goofy bucket hat.

They have on sunglasses and a mask and a kind of heavy windbreaker jacket.

Here he comes.

One particular video clip caught Ms.

Thompson's attention.

I want you to watch what he does right there.

He's walking back and forth there.

Yeah, he's like a little indecisive.

Yeah.

He's like, hmm, hmm.

Notable because the video was recorded just four minutes before John stopped responding to calls and texts.

And now there was this oddly attired man or woman directly across the street from John Tokuhara's clinic staring at the front door, which was chain shot because of an earlier act of vandalism.

So it wasn't like he was going to go try the

door.

You can see right away that he ceased.

Yeah.

There are many clips of this mystery person walking one way, then another.

So many that, when viewed all at once, they come across as a confusing jumble of disconnected images.

So to help us understand a little better the sequence of events, Liz Thompson walked us through the route taken by the suspected killer, starting with the very first camera that picked him up, him or her.

This one, overlooking the parking lot of preschool, Stepping Stones Academy.

He's captured walking this direction along here.

These hedges at that time were much shorter.

And then back in that corner there's a video camera that captured this.

A block later here's Bucket Hat again picked up by the cameras of this dialysis clinic.

And under that overhang there are two surveillance cameras.

And they look out towards the street

and they captured as the person in the white hat walked past the dialysis clinic.

Another camera captured the suspect walking down this street and then turning right at the intersection.

So around this corner, if you'll look to the right, do you see that sign way up high on that building?

It says hiker squad.

Right.

On the corner above that sign are two surveillance cameras.

And they've got a perfect view.

They've got a perfect view.

It was one of those cameras that caught the person in the bucket hat pacing back and forth across from John's clinic.

So

the person stops about right here, and this is where you see that indecision.

It's closed.

Should I go?

And those are the cameras that captured that.

So at this point, And this is very specific.

Now we know this is the specific business this person is wanting to go to.

Because at this point,

now the person crosses the street directly in front of the clinic.

But then turns left, walking up the sidewalk along the row of businesses which ended at the Ultimate Grinds restaurant.

And they have a lot of cameras.

Oh, yeah.

See a camera here.

Two.

Yeah.

Three of them, I think.

So what it captures is the person with the white hat walks across this grassy area almost like they're going to go that way and then turns to go around the back of the building.

After rounding Ultimate Grinds, the suspect was picked up on a camera overlooking the back parking lot.

But only so far because the cameras do not cover the back entrance to the clinic.

But if we go back to that overview camera at Hyper Squad and zoom way in, we can just make out the white hat near the rear entrance to John's clinic, and then it disappears.

The time is 6.15.51.

The hat reappears one minute and 13 seconds later.

It was during that time police believe John Tokohara was murdered.

Then the bucket hat person moving more quickly now walks past those cameras in reverse order.

These cameras are watching him all the way along here, right?

They are.

This is the video that we watched that he, from the back, he's approaching the street, getting ready to cross the street.

Where something very unexpected happens.

So he crosses the street.

This is where he starts to jog a little bit.

It looks like maybe the wind catches a hat.

The hat comes off.

Lands right over there.

Lands right over there in the middle of the lane.

A hat that would presumably be covered with DNA.

So find the hat?

Find John Tokuhara's killer, right?

Well, good luck with that.

It happens in a second.

The hat worn by John Tokohara's suspected killer blows off and lands in the middle of the street.

Here he goes.

Now watch the hat.

And he's not even going to stop to think about it.

the most crucial element of this apparent disguise now suddenly gone but he or she does not return to pick up the hat perhaps because said Liz Thompson

because under the hat the killer appeared to be wearing a wig an extra layer of disguise so to me it looks like one of those Halloween wigs that has like elastic that goes over your head and then you have like curly almost clown hair in the back and if you have something on your head that may prevent you from feeling that that hat has come off yeah you know he may not have noticed at all to liz thompson's investigative eye the suspected killer seemed distracted while crossing the street i found it very interesting that when he gets over to the sidewalk he's worried about something And then what's he doing with the bag?

He opens the bag and he briefly looks inside of it.

The now hatless suspect follows the same route back and is last seen exiting this camera shot at the Stepping Stones Academy, just where the camera picked up the bucket hat 10 minutes earlier.

But now that hat was lying in the street, run over again and again by dozens of cars, trucks, even a bus.

It was blown about for more than 12 minutes before this man crossed the street to claim it.

And

that's all caught on surveillance video.

Aha.

So they were able to get good face shots of the man that picked up the hat from the surveillance video.

But who was it?

Using those face shots, a local beat cop actually found the man who found the hat.

He was homeless and camped nearby, and they went to his camp and there's the hat exactly where he said he had put it.

He kind of watted it up and stuck it next to his cooler in his camp.

This was now 10 days after John Tokohara was murdered.

10 days after the hat had fallen from the suspect's head.

So there's a problem right off the bat that it laid in the street and then there is this period of time where the man who picked it up said no one else touched it, but we don't know that.

We don't have confirmation of that.

Meaning it could be so contaminated it would be worthless as evidence.

Still, they sent the hat to the Honolulu Police Department's crime lab for DNA testing, a process that would take weeks.

As they waited, investigators continued to watch those surveillance videos again and again.

And they saw something they hadn't noticed before.

A white pickup truck that kept popping up on the same cameras that captured footage of the bucket hat person.

Liz Thompson showed us how the footage matched up.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through the videos

that they discovered that showed the path of the truck arriving.

22 minutes before the murder, here's the truck, or a white truck at least, going by Ultimate Grinds.

Now seen by one of those cameras at Hyper Squad,

and then captured by that loading dock camera.

Heading up the street past the dialysis clinic and that Stepping Stones Academy camera.

Now, that's just a truck going by.

I wonder why they would think that that wasn't particularly interesting.

But then eight minutes later, that's our person in the bucket hat.

Heading, as we now know, toward John Tokohara's clinic.

and then returning hatless ten minutes later.

A minute after that person walks out of frame, a white truck appears.

Turns right up the street.

Turns right again, passing in front of the Stepping Stones Academy, and is last spotted heading toward the freeway.

But the driver is never seen, nor is the license plate identified.

And there are thousands of white pickup trucks in Hawaii.

They're as common as coconuts.

Who knows for sure if these are all the same truck or not?

It was frustrating.

And then on February the 5th, 24 days after the murder, the Honolulu Police Department called the press together.

They had an announcement to make regarding the Tokohara investigation.

We now consider this female and another male to be persons of interest.

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The prowling white pickup, the wandering stranger, the clown wig, the crumpled bucket hat, the backpack full of cash.

None of this was known to the public when a spokesperson from the Honolulu Police Department made this cryptic statement: We have discovered that the victim was in a romantic relationship with a female.

We now consider this female and another male to be persons of interest.

This announcement by the Honolulu Police Department came out of the blue, and it was strange.

Strange in that it was so vague.

The couple referenced were not arrested, weren't named, weren't even labeled as suspects, just persons of interest.

That was it.

John's friend of 35 years, Nicole, said she had no idea who the police were talking about.

That was a shocklight.

Nobody knew who they were.

So why did the police make this announcement rather than make an arrest?

Anybody in law enforcement knows that calling someone a person of interest has no legal bearing.

A witness to a crime can be called a person of interest.

So what was the point?

This can be a strategy to perhaps motivate someone to talk.

Meaning police may have been trying to get one of those persons of interest to flip on the other.

What police didn't say in this announcement announcement was that they believe this mystery couple had a connection to that white pickup truck.

After checking with a car expert, investigators determined the pickup was a 2014 to 2016 Chevy Silverado crew cab work truck.

A search of the DMV database, though, showed there were dozens of trucks in Hawaii that fit that description.

53 trucks, to be exact.

Well, guess who one of these trucks was registered to?

Eric Thompson.

The man married to Joyce Thompson, the prolific Instagrammer who seven months before the murder had an affair with John Tokuhara.

The Thompsons were 30-something strivers

who, along with their toddler daughter, lived in this tony neighborhood east of downtown Honolulu.

Their home had a tennis court, some rental units, and it was just steps from the beach.

A family sanctuary until police showed up three weeks after John Tokohara's murder with a warrant to search the Thompsons' home and computers and cars.

Parked in the driveway, the police found Eric's pickup truck, a white 2014 Chevy, a Silverado work truck, just like the one in all those videos.

Inside the house, Police found guns, lots of them.

12 all told.

The The other thing that was found was a lot of ammunition.

22 caliber ammunition.

The same type used to kill John Tokohara.

It was all very curious, but not incriminating, because neither the guns nor the ammunition matched the shell casings found at the murder scene.

And police found nothing on Eric's phone, nothing on his computer that connected him to John Tokohara.

No texts, no calls, no emails, nothing.

In fact, it appeared the only thing possibly connecting Eric Thompson to the murder was that truck of his, a truck that kind of looked like the one in all those videos.

And certainly police needed more than that to get an arrest warrant.

So they waited for the DNA results on that bucket hat.

In some of the samples, it was more than four people.

And these mixtures are not interpretable by most of the government labs.

They don't have the capability to take a look at this mixture of DNA and separate out, okay,

this is this profile, this is this profile.

Which is why most of the DNA tests came back as inconclusive, except for two, which determined Eric could not be excluded as a contributor.

Didn't say for sure it was him, just couldn't be excluded.

Nothing more than that, but it was good enough for the cops.

On February 14th, 2022, Valentine's Day, as well as his fifth wedding anniversary,

Eric Thompson was arrested and charged with murder.

Court documents allege Eric Thompson walked into Tokuhara Acupuncture and Healthcare about 6.15 the evening of January 12th.

But friends like Julie and Tolin, who's known John since kindergarten, were now more confused than than ever.

Who the heck were Eric and Joyce Thompson?

I never heard of her.

Really?

In all the years you knew John, you never heard of Joyce?

Nope.

I don't know her.

I don't know her.

I don't know them.

Who were these people?

And how did they fit into John's life?

Together, since their first flirtations at Colandi High School, Eric and Joyce looked like the perfect match.

Eric, the pragmatic one, got a degree in biology, then launched a thriving contracting business.

Joyce, however, lived among the clouds.

She attended beautician school at a couple of failed startups and routinely sought advice from psychics.

They stayed together, though, and 14 years after they met, they married.

Three years later, in 2020, they had a baby girl.

But despite being homegrown locals, to the close circle of friends around John Tokuhara, Eric and Joyce were strangers.

Nobody had ever heard of them.

All of that was, you know, kind of a shocklight.

Nobody knew who they were

or how.

Even your best friends have secrets, right?

Right.

Now, police were saying this stranger, wearing a disguise no less, and furious about some fling involving his wife, walked into John's acupuncture studio and shot him to death.

But was some past affair motive enough to execute a man in cold blood?

And could the state produce enough evidence to prove Eric Thompson was in fact the man in the bucket hat?

Once arrested, the accused man did not linger behind bars very long.

No long months of jail time awaiting trial.

No, Eric Thompson quickly posted bail, set at a million dollars, and went home to house arrest in his spacious property with his child and his wife Joyce.

who was still by her husband's side 17 months later when his murder trial was called to order, do you think to see that his wife was sitting up there in court, apparently supporting him?

It made me sick to my stomach.

But you know, they said that she had to be there, you know, to put up a front, I guess.

I don't know, make her look like she supported her husband, make him look innocent.

I don't know.

I had never covered a trial as extensively as this one.

This was my first go-around, and what a trial to jump into.

Hawaii News Now anchor Mark Carpenter said that to him, Eric Thompson appeared to be the unlikeliest of murder defendants.

Eric Thompson is a self-made businessman.

He is a successful contractor.

He lives all the way on the other side of the island.

So what is going on here?

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Benjamin Rose put it rather succinctly.

The state's case in a single sentence.

Eric Thompson killed the man who slept with his wife.

And this is a story as old as time.

The first witness was John Tokohara's mom, mom, Lily, who told the story of finding her son's body as if it had happened just minutes ago.

I went into the office and I saw him on the floor.

And I saw the paper.

Paperwork all over the room.

Next, the prosecution called Darryl Fujita to the stand.

He's the guy, remember, whose ex actually left him for John Tokohara twice.

The strategy, presumably, was to show the jury that Fujita should not be portrayed as some alternate suspect for the defense to accuse, because

he'd been fully investigated and cleared.

But the prosecutor did not go easy on Fujita when asking that one very hard question.

Why did he scrub his phone before handing it over to police?

Why do you normally delete phone call logs, texts?

I don't know, man.

I don't see anything wrong with it.

Like, I just, I just, I just

them.

You agree that it looks kind of odd, right?

No.

I mean, unless you got some...

I mean,

watch what I say here, but

I don't think it looks suspicious to me.

For lack of a better word, that was among the most colorful bits of testimony that we saw.

He was annoyed to even be there, to even be involved with this, which is understandable.

John DeMarco was also called for the same reasons as Fujita.

I was really

flabbergasted that I was

called to have to testify, first of all, because I wasn't a suspect.

But how solid, really, was the case against Eric Thompson?

Well, now the lead detective took the stand, a man named Mead.

Detective Mead began by describing what he found when he arrived at John Tokuhara's clinic.

It appeared very personal.

Mr.

Tokuhara was shot several times in the face, and it seemed very calculated and quick.

Detective Mead walked the jury through all that surveillance video of the white truck and the mystery man in the bucket hat.

And then they showed the jury this.

It's video recorded by a neighbor's security camera overlooking Eric Thompson's home.

This is from the evening of the murder.

First, there's Eric's truck leaving the property at 5.20 p.m.

about an hour before John Tokohara was shot.

And then at 6.48 p.m.,

exactly 30 minutes after the shooting, the truck returns.

Now, look at this.

The neighbor's surveillance camera catches a light flaring and flickering in the Thompson's backyard.

Only one explanation for that, said Detective Mead.

Through my training and experience, it's typical for suspects that have committed crimes to try and destroy evidence.

And what's one way of destroying evidence?

Fires.

Mind you, the police never could find evidence of an actual bonfire in the Thompsons' backyard, but, said Detective Mead, they did find something, something that would account for what the neighbor's camera recorded.

We discovered,

I would say, a medium-sized pot that appeared to have char marks

in a wheelbarrow that also appeared to be partially burnt.

The prosecution closed its case with the DNA tests of the White Bucket Hat that determined Eric Thompson could not be excluded as a possible contributor.

The DNA recovered on the white bucket hat, all this surveillance video, the fact that Joyce was seeing him, they have this extensive history together.

It had seemed that the prosecution had done a great job of putting themselves at an advantage.

At least that's what Carpenter thought, until Eric's defense team presented its case and put Eric Thompson himself on the stand.

This alley square affirmed that a customer here about to get to you is true.

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Eric did not kill John Togar.

Evidence, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder sometimes.

And this beholder, Defense Attorney David Hayakawa,

saw not a solid case against his client, but a messy blundering investigation by cops wearing blinders.

The police in this case blatantly ignored significant, obvious, other leads that could have either tracked existing suspects or found unknown suspects.

The person in the bucket hat, for example?

Well, there was no telling who that was.

The mystery man in all these different videos does not look like Eric Thompson.

He does not walk like Eric Thompson.

And the hat itself?

It had been so mishandled and cross-contaminated, said Defense Attorney Hayakawa.

It should never have been admitted as evidence.

The prosecution is saying, even though this many people touched it, you cannot rule out that Eric Thompson's DNA is still there.

Whereas the defense is saying, so many people touched this hat, there's no way you can definitively say that it belongs to Eric Thompson.

Remember that Chevy Silverado spotted in Waipahu?

The one the bucket hat person was supposedly driving?

That wasn't Eric's truck, said the defense.

Couldn't have been.

Because at the time of the shooting, Eric said he was far away on the opposite side of the island at this dump, tossing out a load of construction debris.

The backyard fire?

That was no bonfire of the evidence.

That was light from the Thompson's tiki torches.

And the stockpot, of course, it was blackened a bit.

It had been used in a construction project.

As for those guns, not a single one of them could be tied to the shooting.

Same thing for all the.22 caliber ammunition the police found at Eric's place.

It was the same caliber, yes, but different brand, different bullet casings.

Then before concluding, the defense called a surprise witness to the stand, Eric Thompson himself.

Miss

Yes.

He'd held his tongue for a year and a half.

But now the jury and the public would finally hear Eric, in his own words, describe a loving relationship with his wife Joyce and his respect and gratitude for John, the acupuncturist who had been treating her.

John not only helped her get pregnant, but also helped her through, and that acupuncture played a big role.

He also talked about his feelings of betrayal when he learned of their affair.

I was really disappointed.

I mean, it just didn't make sense that, like,

John helped us through the pregnancy.

And, like, I mean, what, I just didn't understand why he would do that if he's just gonna

blow it up later.

Then Eric told the jury he never contacted John at all after finding out about the affair, and he told them why.

The first couple of days I was thinking, you know, call him, chew him out, but I came to the realization that, you know,

I don't think I could have said anything to make things better, and I don't think I could get him to say sorry or feel bad.

I mean, what's the point?

You know, like,

the problem was with me and Joyce, it wasn't,

I mean, she cut him off.

Did you kill John Tokahara?

No, I didn't.

Did you have anything to do with being in Waipahu or anything to do with that entire incident?

No, I had nothing to do with it.

For the question, John.

Eric came across as somebody that was sincerely heartbroken to find out that there had been an affair going on and she had been seeing John.

He didn't come across as the cold, calculated person that the prosecution tried to build a case around.

In his closing argument, Defense Attorney Hayakawa attacked both the police and John Tokohara.

saying one was incompetent and the other was a home wrecker.

Who knows who else was out there?

The detective himself said we had leads, multiple relationships, overlapping relationships.

Many of the women

were in relationships and many of them had children.

None of that followed up on.

Julian Tolin, who'd known John since kindergarten, couldn't believe how her friend, the victim, was portrayed in court.

The defense was twisting stuff around and, you know.

Making it seem like John was the but the bad guy.

What was it like to hear that sort of thing?

It was frustrating.

I was mad.

I was upset.

And he can't say a darn thing, right?

You sit up in court and say, No, that isn't him.

Yeah, it was very frustrating.

I was sitting there and I was like, you know, shaking my leg and like, oh my gosh, you know, like, I can't believe they're saying stuff like that.

And it was, it was tough.

And now it was up to the jury to decide what to believe.

That was

something that kind of I couldn't believe what I heard.

A trampled bucket hat, perhaps worn by the killer.

A white truck, perhaps driven by the killer.

A mess of slightly ambiguous DNA.

What were jurors to think?

Whatever it was they were thinking, they went on and on.

One day, two days, and at the end of day three,

they gave up.

Hopelessly deadlocked, nine to convict, three to acquit, and so the judge declared a mistrial.

That was

something that kind of I couldn't believe what I heard.

You heard all the evidence, you know, you listened to, you know, all these people come in and you still couldn't come to a conclusion.

I mean, it,

you know, everything's there.

It was hard, you know, to see Eric Thompson sitting there, smug and acting like he was innocent.

He walked out of there.

Yeah.

And his wife.

Yeah.

In his hand in hand.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was there.

It was hard to see.

It was hard to see.

Eric remained at home under house arrest pending retrial.

But 13 months later, as the prosecution prepared to make its case in court a second time, this happened.

Felony trials are being delayed and many criminal cases are being reviewed because of this report.

Hawaii News Now investigative reporter Lynn Kawano uncovered an audit of the Honolulu Police Department's crime lab.

which revealed that while they passed on most of the issues and most of the parameters, they did have about 14 deficiencies and in those

had to do with DNA.

Liz Thompson, who was trained by the FBI to do advanced DNA investigations, reviewed the crime lab report.

They discovered that the Honolulu Police Department's lab wasn't validating the results of the DNA testing.

What do you mean wasn't validating?

So part of the process of DNA testing, you've got to have checks and balances.

So you want to make sure that your results can be replicated and you have a process to validate those results.

Which is kind of an important

process.

Extremely important.

Extremely important.

Didn't they know that?

They should have.

When you saw that, what was your first thought?

I was shocked.

All of which meant the state could not use the Bucket Hat DNA analysis in trial number two.

And without that DNA evidence, how could the prosecution ever hope to get a guilty verdict at the retrial?

Still, they went ahead.

This is January 21st, 2025.

You'll see that throughout this trial,

Eric Thompson planned this murder,

and he executed this murder

nearly flawlessly.

And this time, the prosecution highlighted motive, the affair.

Eric's wife, Joyce, sitting rigidly behind him opted not to testify in either trial citing hawaii's marital privilege law so the prosecutor called joyce's sister kelly so after the affair how was the defendant's relationship with joyce after yes after discovering the affair the first week was a little different, but after that it was back to normal.

It was as if nothing happened.

As if nothing happened, the prosecutor alleged, because Eric Thompson was quietly calculating strategy.

Jurors watched the surveillance video of the white Chevy Silverado driving around Waipahu before and after the murder.

But how could they know this was Eric Thompson?

The prosecutor called a man who sold Chevy trucks.

What can you tell us about this truck here?

These are freeze frames of Eric Silverado and the one in the surveillance video.

When doing a side-by-side, what can you tell us about these two trucks we see?

Looks the same.

Black mirrors, running boards, the steel wheels.

Then, this officer told the jury about the man they believed was driving that truck, the man in the bucket hat.

How many hours of surveillance footage in total did you watch, approximately?

Around three weeks, more or less, not including my days off.

Based on your review of the surveillance in the nearby area, did you develop a suspect?

I did.

Can you describe what that suspect looked like?

Yeah, this suspect was wearing a light-colored bucket hat style.

Which flew off after the murder and, as you'll recall, was picked up by a man who lived in a homeless encampment and who was later found by the police.

Then the Honolulu police criminalist testified about the DNA test she did on the bucket hat,

but could say nothing more because the dismal results of that crime lab audit had invalidated her earlier analysis.

Do you have any conclusions today?

No, I did redact my conclusions.

Why did you redact them?

It was redacted because there was a statistic that we do not use anymore.

It was as if the prosecution was simply admitting defeat.

Until this.

Do you saw any swear or affirmed that the testimony?

A surprising witness was called to the stand.

I gave please have a seat.

While the judge refused to admit the police department's DNA analysis into evidence, he did allow an analyst from a high-tech company called CyberGenetics to present their own separate analysis of the bucket hat DNA.

And when she applied the company's advanced software to the DNA in the bucket hat.

The DNA typing results for the interior top of Crown are 16.4 trillion times more likely to be observed if they originated from Eric Thompson.

16.4 trillion?

The number almost seemed made up like something out of a children's book.

But no.

What that computer-generated number said to the courtroom was that Eric Thompson was the man in the bucket hat, and therefore the man who killed John Tokuhara.

Except

Cybergenetics' enormous number was based on data provided to them by the Honolulu Police Department's Problem Plagued Crime Lab.

So,

how reliable a number could it really be?

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What a game changer DNA has been.

The proof that settles criminal cases everywhere.

Especially when DNA offers assurances like this in the case of the murder of acupuncturist John Tokuhara.

So the DNA typing results for the interior top of Crown are 16.4 trillion times more likely to be observed if they originated from Eric Thompson.

Meaning Eric Thompson must be guilty of murder.

Unless.

Defense Attorney Susan Arnett pointed out a hitch in that big cyber genetics DNA number.

The company never did test the actual bucket hat.

No swabs, no swipes at all.

The data from HPD, all of that comes to you.

It comes to me in an electronic file.

Meaning, cyber genetics analyzed the digital information which was sent to them by the Honolulu Police Department lab.

A lab with, remember, some big deal problems, which criminalist Michelle Amarin admitted to during cross-examination.

The crime lab was audited, correct?

Yes.

And the audit came out with some serious criticisms and finding fault with the crime lab, didn't it?

There were some findings, yes.

It was a big deal, wasn't it, Ms.

Amarin?

Sure, yes.

Made the local news.

It did.

Ad said the defense, the hat was so contaminated after being run over dozens of times and handled by who knows how many people, it simply was worthless as evidence.

Anyway, who could say for sure the guy wearing it was even John's killer?

Look at all these people roaming about in the parking lot outside John's clinic, said new lead defense attorney Nelson Goo.

And in this video, as it shows a man walking towards the clinic with a bag over his shoulder, followed by a person pulling a shopping cart, correct?

Correct.

Any one of them could have been the killer, said Goo.

Or could have been John DeMarco, whose wife had a fling with John Tokuhara.

When you confronted John Tokuhara, you were pissed, right?

Yeah, a little bit.

That's natural.

But during this call, isn't it true that you said, brah, this is bullshit what you did?

Yeah, probably, yeah.

The toughest part...

was being on the stand and having the defense almost accusing you or even being asked the question:

Did you murder John Tokuhara?

I'm like, Absolutely not.

It was just, it's just a weird question to have been asked in such a serious tone.

What about Daryl Fujita?

Remember him?

The guy who twice lost his girlfriend, Andy, to John?

Even though you weren't legally married to Andy, it was as if it was like a family unit, right?

Yes.

Okay.

And things were good, right?

It could be better, but yeah.

So that went on for several years?

Okay.

No, yes or no?

Yeah.

Yes?

Is yeah a yes.

Yes.

Okay.

We have to make a record that's fine.

No, I understand.

She got to type it.

Yes, okay.

Now,

so Mr.

Fujita, at some point,

John Tokuhara broke up that family union by

getting.

I don't know why you guys keep trying to say that.

I mean, you guys can keep saying it, but no, he didn't.

It was bad between both sides, and that's just the way it is, bro.

But the lawyer continued to imply that Fujita was a man with a motive who was never fully cleared.

I want to talk about Dar Fujita, right?

He

gave an alibi as to the relevant time, saying he was at his parents' house 4:30 p.m.

on January 12th, 2022, maybe leaving around 7:30 p.m.

Yes, yes.

You never verified that alibi, right?

Uh, No.

As for his own client, Eric Thompson, Goo got Detective Mead to concede there was zero digital evidence connecting Eric to John Tokohara or the murder.

There's no data, cellular or otherwise, to indicate that he was in Waipahu on January 12, 2022, correct?

No.

And actually, Detective, there's no...

data, there's no social media, there's no Instagrams, there's no phone records of Eric Eric Thompson ever trying to communicate with John Tokuhara from July 21, 2021 to January 12, 2022, correct?

Yes.

And then Eric Thompson took the stand again.

A bold move, but one that seemed to have worked for the defense in the first trial.

We went through several, multiple miscarriages along the way.

He told the jury the backstory of his and Joyce's failed attempts to have children and the advice they got from a friend.

She recommended she go to, you know, the acupuncturist that she was going to.

And who was that?

That was Mr.

John Tokuharo.

And that said, Eric Thompson was like a miracle because after John's treatments, Joyce got pregnant.

And on June 9th, 2020, daughter Emma was born.

Eric said he was thrilled.

But Joyce...

seemed depressed afterward.

It seemed like she was in herself, not as enthusiastic as I thought she'd be, because, you know, motherhood was something that, you know, we both looked forward to for so long.

So Joyce went back to John for follow-up treatments.

I knew she was going, but it wasn't, it didn't raise any red flags.

Eric said he felt very good about it all until he checked his home security system after returning from a work trip.

To my surprise, I see.

I see

Joyce walk out in the middle of the night.

So I seem like, wait, Emma's in the house.

Joyce is going outside.

What's so important to go outside for?

And I was saying, like,

you know, I would never leave, you know, leave a baby in the house like that.

When confronted, Joyce admitted nothing, at least for the first two days.

And then she looked at me and she said, you know, I had an affair.

And

what was your reaction?

What were you feeling?

I mean, it was

complete shock.

I think she said,

she said, it was with John Tokohara.

And then, I was like, who?

And then she

said, you know, Dr.

John.

And then I was like,

it's like, oh shit,

the massage guy?

And it's just like, just didn't make any sense.

Like,

not only why, but it's like, like, how, like, how logistically

could this happen?

Like,

I had no,

like, prior to that week, there's like zero suspicion.

I was pissed, like, what did I do to deserve this?

Did you ever threaten to kill John at that time?

No, never.

Have you ever threatened to kill John?

No.

Did you ever feel like you had to go confront him?

You know, maybe in the first day I seemed like, oh, you know, how could someone do that?

Like, I would want to, you know, call him and, you know, tell him off kind of thing.

But I mean,

I mean, I just realized, like, you know, where's that going to get you?

And then I kind of came to the realization that,

like, holy shit, like,

like, I must be at fault too.

I realized that, you know, John was there for her, and

I should have paid more attention.

I realized that, you know, it was an issue between me and Joyce.

How did they get past it?

Joyce agreed to sign a post-marital agreement, which would give Eric everything,

including the house and custody of their daughter, should their marriage come to an end, no matter who was at fault.

I think Joyce came up with the idea of, well, I'm never going to do this again, and here, we can do this.

15 days after the signing of that agreement, Joyce Thompson got a phone call.

She kind of just looks at me, just like shocked, and she says, oh my god, John's been

felt shot.

Eric,

did you kill John Tokoharo?

No, no, no, no.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Quite a story, one which the prosecution was ready to rip into.

So, to save your doomed marriage, you decide to kill the man who could take her away from mail?

No.

Joyce got a call.

We wouldn't be fighting about stuff if it was with John Tokuharo.

As unflappable as Eric Thompson was on the stand, his testimony did nothing to persuade John's friends that he was innocent.

What did it do to you to look at him?

Oh man, I always like,

I don't want to kick his ass, you know what I mean?

I just look at him like, bruh.

I mean, I don't know.

For me, it's like if you're not guilty, you'd be like fighting for help, like trying to make sure that, you know, he'd had nothing, no feeling whatsoever.

Of course, by testifying, Eric had left himself open to cross-examination,

which Prosecutor Ben Rose began by playing the video of Eric pulling into his driveway half an hour after the murder.

This is at 6:48 p.m.

This is you returning, correct?

Yes.

And nobody in the car with you?

That's right.

And as I paused it here at 18, 48, and 44 seconds, still nothing in the bed of the truck, correct?

Yes.

To observers in the courtroom, it seemed like an odd line of questioning.

Those facts were not in dispute, after all.

Yes.

What was the point in going over it again?

And then Rose played this video, recorded three hours later as Eric was leaving to pick up a few groceries at the local Safeway.

This is you leaving at 9.53 p.m., as you testified to, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

This time, there's a toolbox in the bed of the truck, right?

Yes.

Why that was significant, Rose didn't say.

Instead, he moved on to that odd post-marital agreement signed two weeks before the murder.

This post-marital agreement

gives you control over your wife, does it not?

I'll just an argument it's a sustain.

You keep the baby and you keep the house in the event of a divorce or separation, correct?

No.

I mean, we weren't intending to be a bad guy.

You signed this document, not intending the terms of the agreement?

We weren't intending to get divorced.

And 15 days after signing this agreement, you killed John Tokuharov, right?

No.

The cross-examination of Eric and Joyce's marriage then weirdly took an abrupt turn away from this legal document.

and toward the influences Joyce felt from the beyond.

The jury learned that Joyce believed in the power of psychics.

Believed so much, she told Eric.

It was a psychic who gave her the green light to have an affair with John.

You believe that Joyce had issues relying on psychics, correct?

During that time, it was...

Yeah, it was becoming an issue.

You find out...

That it was a psychic who encouraged Joyce to have an affair.

You find out that it was a psychic, that Joyce was trying to reach out to a psychic in December, and you're worried that she's gonna have another affair, right?

No, I think she was trying to find like a business psychic or something.

So to save your doomed marriage, you decide to kill the man who could take her away from you.

That's an argumentative.

No.

Argumentative indeed.

It was an accusation to be repeated in Prosecutor Rose's closing arguments the following day that John Tokohara's murder was well thought out.

And here's where all those elements came together.

Starting with the removal of that tool or lockbox in the back of Eric's truck.

On the day of the murder, when he leaves his home at 5.20 p.m.,

no

lockbox.

When he returns at 6.48 p.m., no lockbox.

When he leaves later that night at 9.53 p.m., he's put the lockbox back on.

He's disguising his truck so that it's not obvious in surveillance that it would be his truck.

He's disguising himself so as not to get caught.

He cases John Tokohara's office before walking around and shooting him.

Those are the actions of a deliberate, rational thinker, somebody who is assessing the risks and benefits.

It is not someone who is

overcome

with emotion.

Then Rose showed the jury a video, which she didn't introduce in the first trial, a video of Eric Thompson walking.

Watch his right arm.

Look how it swings.

This is something that he can't consciously try to stop.

Watch here at 9.32 p.m.

from his home, that same right arm swing.

All of this evidence points to one man and one man only.

It's Eric Thompson.

Eric Thompson did not kill John Tukharo.

Defense Attorney Nelson Goose, in his closing argument, said police suffered from a particular form of blindness during the investigation, in that they only had eyes for Eric.

This is the perfect example of tunnel vision.

No eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, no evidence that Eric was in Waipawa that day or the days or weeks and years before.

There was no digital footprints.

There was no suspicious activity on Eric's devices.

None.

No searches or contact or threats anything towards John Tukohara before or after finding out about the affair.

And don't forget, he said, about that backpack full of cash.

What's under the desk is all this money, $100 bills, 38 of them.

And the prosecution never explained what the money was for or why it was there, said Attorney Goo.

It could have been an important lead.

This is the inference.

He owes money.

And then there was Darrell Fujita's phone.

Why did he get rid of his initial phone?

And of course, how could the work of the Honolulu Police Lab be trusted after that audit?

The results are unreliable.

Without these validation studies, you cannot rely on their conclusions.

Where's the evidence?

Circumstantial or not, the conclusion I ask you to draw from all this is this.

Eric Thompson did not kill John Tokohara.

With that, the jury began its deliberations.

And as the hours ticked by, a familiar, discouraging feeling began to spread among John's friends.

It makes you think a lot of different things, right?

Like, are they having issues with the evidence?

Or I mean, if it was a sure thing, they'd be back in a couple hours, right?

Right.

John Tokuhara's friends waited, waited for the jurors to make up their minds.

And a day passed, and then another day.

The mood darkened.

It makes you think a lot of different things, right?

Like, are they having issues with the evidence?

Or...

I mean, if it was a sure thing, they'd be back in a couple hours, right?

Right.

If a mistrial was declared, it seemed unlikely the DA would spend the time and money for a third go-round.

Meaning a hung jury could essentially be an acquittal.

Eric could walk out of the courthouse a free man for good.

Our initial vote was like eight said he was guilty, three undecided, one not guilty, and the undecided said they were leaning toward not guilty.

This juror, who asked not to be identified, told us how they argued and argumented about all those bits of sometimes ambiguous evidence.

So I thought, oh boy, we're going to be here a long time.

One of the jurors said,

how do you know it's him?

Maybe, you know, we can't see who it is.

We have to have proof.

I don't have proof.

And

we just talked it over.

You know, what about the truck?

What about the bonfire in the backyard?

What about the DNA evidence?

And, you know, going through the evidence piece by piece, over and over.

We watched every single video at least 10 times.

Like this video of the white truck taken before and after the murder his truck was seen a few blocks away from the where the murder took place yes to me it's impossible impossible that it wasn't eric's truck that is

to be accused of something like this and when the juror listened to eric thompson testify

that was lame all of his testimony was lame and terse He could have done much better.

But there were other possibilities, after all.

What about Daryl Fujita's testimony?

Some people said that some of the jury members said maybe he did it.

The person who you saw walking in that white bucket hat

toward where the murder occurred and then away again.

Could you tell whether it was a male or a female

or who it was at all?

Did it look like a mother?

Actually, we cannot identify who that person is.

It probably is a male, but we can't really say for sure.

Surely can't tell if it's Eric.

That's true.

He's so well disguised, you can't tell it's him.

Some of the jurors didn't want to convict him for that reason.

We just went over the stuff again and again and again and again.

And after the second day, it was looking like it was going to be hung.

And then, on the third day after the lunch break, alliances started shifting.

And finally, they made a decision.

So we figured we're going to go...

sign the paper and give it to the judge and then tomorrow be in court again to come back and read the verdict.

Yeah.

The judge's clerk entered the room, told the jurors to line up in order as they did every time they entered the courtroom.

I figure, okay, we're just going to talk to the judge.

And then they open the door.

Everybody's in there, the cameras, Eric's in there.

This is it.

We didn't know.

Oh, boy.

The jury is now back in the courtroom.

Everybody started shaking.

Mr.

Thompson, can you stand as the clerk of the court reads the verdict of the jury?

I had butterflies in my stomach.

I had tears coming out, honestly, because I felt very bad for both sides.

And then we had to read the verdict.

Seda Huai versus Eric Thompson.

As to count one, we the jury in this case find the defendant guilty as charge of murder in the second degree.

Guilty.

Eric stood as still as a statue as the verdict was read.

And then slowly removed his jacket and walked toward his waiting cell.

He did not look back, not even a glance at his high school sweetheart, his wife, the mother of his child, Joyce.

And from one of John's friends, a parting taunt.

Do your time, boy.

Which would be 15 to life.

Later in the hallway outside the courtroom, John's friends and family held each other and wept.

John's favorite beach was this one, White Plains.

His surf buddies since childhood were known as the Fenceline Crew.

This is where his friends held his paddle out.

And where they met with us a few days after the verdict.

Feelings about Joyce and Eric were still very raw.

How can you sleep at night

knowing what you did to him, to to John, our friend, his family.

How could you?

I'm mad.

I'm still mad.

You took away this person that we love and we care about.

How dare you?

I don't.

As for Joyce, she sat there in court behind him, supporting him when it all started from her.

I'm not only blaming her, yes, John is also at fault as well with the affair, but she sat there knowing that this happened because of your husband.

And now?

I don't think I've laughed the same since he's been gone.

And let me tell you, John is not

dead.

He's still here.

Like the saying goes,

you are the best of the last person you have met.

And each and one of us is a piece of him that's the best of him.

I met John out here surfing.

one day.

And he still talks to him, said Moses and Cheddar.

every time

there's always moments my wife always asks why are you sitting in the lineup for so long

then i would just be like the first waves for you john the first waves

first waves

and john would say when it was time to go home There will be like one more.

One more.

See that.

One more, one more.

One more, there we go.

One more.

One more there.

One more.

One more wave.

One more laugh with a friend.

Or dinner with mom.

One more moment of life.

And that's all for this edition of Dateline.

And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Keith Morrison and Blaine Alexander will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.

I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Good night.

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