The Other Side of Paradise

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Speaker 11 My friend called me and she was hysterical and she said, Sander's been killed. I was like, oh my God.

Speaker 11 As soon as she was killed, we all knew who did it. As the months went on, we just realized that this guy's going to get off.
How is this happening?

Speaker 12 Just keep praying.

Speaker 11 It's all we can do.

Speaker 13 There aren't a lot of murders in paradise. People still talk about this one.

Speaker 11 Just a darling girl with two darling children.

Speaker 15 It's a story Keith Morrison followed for more than a decade.

Speaker 17 How? When?

Speaker 19 I got a call from her boss who said she hadn't showed up for.

Speaker 11 They found her in the car.

Speaker 20 I saw in the back of her neck some literature marks.

Speaker 11 She just didn't deserve that.

Speaker 2 A small island, a small pool of suspects.

Speaker 13 Ryan, her lover with a past.

Speaker 11 I had no idea he was a drug dealer.

Speaker 13 And Darren, the soon-to-be ex-husband.

Speaker 21 That morning he called in sick.

Speaker 23 Was Darren polygraphed?

Speaker 20 He didn't pass.

Speaker 13 And the lover?

Speaker 24 He didn't do that good either.

Speaker 13 Without much else to go on, this case was growing colder by the day.

Speaker 11 Nothing, just nothing happens.

Speaker 13 But a father doesn't forget.

Speaker 21 I have to have justice for my daughter.

Speaker 13 After all these years, are there still secrets to uncover?

Speaker 28 It's quite a journey for you.

Speaker 29 It isn't over yet.

Speaker 13 This father finally got his answer. But is it the one he wanted?

Speaker 30 Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine what we're going through now.

Speaker 13 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 13 Here is Keith Morrison with the other side of paradise.

Speaker 16 Wandering through this land, you wonder if you've been transported to the beginning of biblical time

Speaker 33 to a garden free of want,

Speaker 34 temptation, or betrayal.

Speaker 34 A tropical paradise.

Speaker 35 And in a land so distractingly beautiful, tourists who ebb and flow like the tides could be forgiven for looking past this lone, tormented father, begging for help for a terrible reason to solve the murder of his precious daughter, Sandy.

Speaker 39 I really appreciate it, Dave.

Speaker 40 John, and anything we can do.

Speaker 41 We're uh

Speaker 40 this takes time, Doug.

Speaker 30 We hope we give them him a rest this year this is how close he are we are 90

Speaker 40 okay it's all good

Speaker 44 we first came upon larry mandanza well on another dateline assignment way back in 2009

Speaker 5 which is when we shot this video he was 68 years old then alone he worked handing out flyers gruff and stoic except when the pain was just too much i just said you know three years.

Speaker 22 It's still rough.

Speaker 47 Larry took us to Sandra's grave, told us how he promised to bring her killer to justice.

Speaker 31 She won't be forgotten as long as I'm alive.

Speaker 16 We had no idea then where this meeting would lead us, that our journey would last a decade.

Speaker 8 A case that would expose evil lurking in this garden paradise and bring Larry to the edge of his own mortality

Speaker 25 many on Kauai knew Sandra even watched her as a teenager dancing in a local marketing video later as a 20-something at the head of a parade float look at the beautiful palette

Speaker 15 right over there gay

Speaker 48 like many here she was multiracial growing up in a household that was half Japanese, half Portuguese, all Hawaiian.

Speaker 32 and a devout Catholic who attended St.

Speaker 16 Catherine's School with friends Alma Umala and Joni Morita.

Speaker 28 So when people ask you what was Sandy like,

Speaker 54 we tell them.

Speaker 25 She was absolutely a go-getter.

Speaker 55 Like she was teacher's pet, always perfect, she always had her hair nicely done.

Speaker 55 You know, she

Speaker 55 was always focused.

Speaker 38 In high school, Sandra was an athlete, a cheerleader, very popular.

Speaker 11 She was a complete package.

Speaker 37 And her home life?

Speaker 55 Old-fashioned,

Speaker 55 traditional family, you know, Catholic,

Speaker 26 play by the rules type of people.

Speaker 46 Discipline.

Speaker 1 A very important thing to Larry.

Speaker 2 He, the 20-year Air Force veteran.

Speaker 19 I was trying to toughen her up, if you want to put it in that expression,

Speaker 19 to know what the real world was like.

Speaker 47 That was why Mary insisted Sandra leave Kauai to go to college.

Speaker 46 She ended up in Honolulu.

Speaker 47 But for a small island girl, it felt as big and lonely as New York City.

Speaker 48 She missed Kauai, her family, and would come home as often as she could.

Speaker 11 That's when she got involved with Darren.

Speaker 46 And Darren was here.

Speaker 11 Darren was here.

Speaker 25 Darren Gallas, a little older, made good money at his highway construction job.

Speaker 3 Sandra was crazy about him.

Speaker 37 And soon after she moved home, they got married.

Speaker 2 Son Austin came nine months later, and Brayden two years after that. So by the age of 24, Sandra was the matriarch of her own little clan.

Speaker 56 She loved the boys to death. I mean, she, you know,

Speaker 19 they were the apple of her eye.

Speaker 53 Life was good until April 2005, when Sandra came to her parents very upset.

Speaker 19 As she told us, she was cleaning out her husband's backpack when two papers fell out, two phone numbers.

Speaker 29 So she called the phone numbers and it turned out to be two different married women.

Speaker 2 Sandra confronted Darren.

Speaker 56 He would never admit it.

Speaker 19 They just kept saying they were friends, they were friends. And she knew otherwise.

Speaker 29 She knew what it was.

Speaker 44 By June, Darren had moved out.

Speaker 2 And Sandra moved on, got a job at the Beach House Restaurant, an island landmark.

Speaker 59 It was a life-changer.

Speaker 11 She was just a darling girl, you know, with two darling children.

Speaker 50 Krista Hall was a waitress at the Beach House and saw firsthand Sandra's transformation from quiet island girl to young working woman.

Speaker 11 And she wore her hair back in a ponytail and she was very prim and proper and very, you know, subdued. And then as soon as she got away from Darren,

Speaker 11 she was like cut her hair in a bob and was really cute and stylish all of a sudden.

Speaker 16 Sandra started going out with friends and as is pretty obvious in this concert video, she was enjoying her new life.

Speaker 60 And before too long, Sandra started getting friendly with one of the chefs, a recent transplant from Oahu named Ryan Shinjo.

Speaker 11 He whined and dined her and, you know, took really good care of her. And he was, I mean, he was really nice to her.
I mean, they were always, you know, doing all kinds of fabulous things.

Speaker 28 Going on Honolulu shopping trips, for instance, where Ryan would lavish expensive gifts on Sandra, like Louis Vuitton luggage.

Speaker 35 larry and sandra's mom toshi knew little of this relationship and on january 25th 2006 were in dallas visiting their son when they got an odd call from sandra's boss i said she hadn't showed up for

Speaker 37 um it's very unusual for her hours later the phone rang again it was 3 a.m

Speaker 32 a time when Bad news comes calling.

Speaker 43 Larry's son answered the phone.

Speaker 39 And this is basically how he goes.

Speaker 19 Hello, you know, oh, hi, you know, hi, cousin.

Speaker 19 No!

Speaker 21 When we come back, she was slumped to the right to the passenger seat, face down.

Speaker 13 Who wanted Sandra dead?

Speaker 39 From what we're told, he went ballistic.

Speaker 40 He just flipped up.

Speaker 34 She was beyond the Eden of the tourist sea,

Speaker 16 out of sight of the rich and verdant estates of the wealthy few.

Speaker 34 She was in a neighborhood more working-class suburbia than Polynesian paradise.

Speaker 25 In her own small ranch house, in her garage, in her car, she'd been strangled to death.

Speaker 16 It was Sandra's new boyfriend, Ryan Shinjo, who called the police, said he found her that way.

Speaker 21 And she was slumped to the right to the passenger seat,

Speaker 61 face down into the seat.

Speaker 2 Roy Asher was one of the original investigators.

Speaker 45 We spoke to him in 2009.

Speaker 8 This was three years after Sandra was murdered.

Speaker 21 I saw in the back of her neck some literature marks. We didn't find the cord itself.
We have an idea what could have been used.

Speaker 17 What?

Speaker 25 A

Speaker 64 thin cord, like a fishing line.

Speaker 10 Sandra's shirt and bra were askew.

Speaker 28 Her lip was split, as if she'd been punched in the face.

Speaker 37 Ryan, the boyfriend, he's the one on the right of the screen, told investigators he discovered Sandra's body around 9 p.m.

Speaker 50 But the cops could see she'd been dead for a while by then.

Speaker 61 Probably eight to ten hours, which would have put the time of death about in the morning.

Speaker 66 Could you get any more exact?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 47 Given that the estranged husband, Darren, used to live with Sandra and Ryan was now dating her, their fingerprints could certainly be explained.

Speaker 6 Nothing suspicious there.

Speaker 5 But Ryan finding the body?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 7 that was potentially suspicious.

Speaker 3 Did he have an alibi?

Speaker 41 Yes.

Speaker 56 Ah, and it checked out.

Speaker 41 Yes.

Speaker 67 Do you remember what it was?

Speaker 41 He was at work.

Speaker 25 So who else?

Speaker 5 Well, there was Sandra's estranged husband, Darren, of course, and this was interesting.

Speaker 61 That morning he called in sick.

Speaker 67 So in other words, he didn't have an alibi.

Speaker 32 No.

Speaker 5 Based simply on that lack of an alibi, the police arrested Darren.

Speaker 56 When they first said, you think her husband could have done it? And I said, my first reaction was, no.

Speaker 22 But even as Larry tried to wrap his mind around that idea, a detective called him the following day.

Speaker 39 And he says, we got to let him go.

Speaker 29 We don't have enough.

Speaker 19 We've talked to the prosecuting attorney and

Speaker 29 we don't have enough.

Speaker 52 Meaning what?

Speaker 5 Was Darren involved or not?

Speaker 16 Hit by grief and impatient for answers, Larry launched an investigation of his own.

Speaker 31 It was like a, I don't know, a panic.

Speaker 56 I mean, I mean, you know, I've got so many things to do and I've got to get it done now.

Speaker 69 As a native Kauaian and veteran Air Force intelligence analyst, Larry had both the connections and the skills to piece together the details surrounding his daughter's murder.

Speaker 22 For instance, he found out that two days before the killing, Darren, while working on a road crew, saw Sandra and Ryan together.

Speaker 56 She goes driving by with her boyfriend in the car.

Speaker 19 And from what we're told, for his coworkers at the time, he went ballistic.

Speaker 40 He just flipped on.

Speaker 67 At that time, and this is important to the case, Sandra and Darren shared custody of their two sons. But remember, she worked evenings at the restaurant, so the boy slept over with Darren.

Speaker 67 And at 6 o'clock in the morning, she would show up, pick them up, take them off for breakfast, get them ready for school and daycare.

Speaker 67 But Larry discovered that on the night before she was murdered, Sandra stayed over at Ryan's house, her boyfriend. He dropped her off at her place at 6 a.m.

Speaker 67 And then the neighbors told Larry they saw her leave in her car soon after that, apparently heading to pick up the boys.

Speaker 28 And neighbors confirmed they saw Sandra's car return a short while later, but without the children.

Speaker 60 Larry learned through his contacts that Sandra had a 10 o'clock appointment that morning to get her nails done at a salon about 45 minutes away.

Speaker 29 She never made the appointment.

Speaker 18 So this is how we narrowed down the time of death before about nine o'clock where she would have had to leave to make her appointment

Speaker 1 the cops didn't tell him but larry learned from his own sources that boyfriend ryan had an alibi well husband darren did not

Speaker 29 all of which got larry thinking the same thing as the police must have been darren who murdered sandra right now i'm i'm driven by the case i mean i've got to get there

Speaker 23 many of sandra's friends like Krista Hall,

Speaker 22 also thought Darren was guilty.

Speaker 11 I think everyone thought that Darren would be arrested immediately and it would, you know, he would be going to jail and the children would be going to the grandparents or her brother and everything was going to be okay.

Speaker 5 And exactly one year after the murder, there was indeed an arrest.

Speaker 49 But it wasn't Darren.

Speaker 13 Coming up, a new theory about Sandra's murder.

Speaker 11 She may have been smuggling drugs and not even knowing it.

Speaker 15 And a threat from her father.

Speaker 39 If I ever figure out a way to get away with it, it'll happen.

Speaker 13 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 5 Kauai is unique in many ways.

Speaker 6 Not the least of which is this.

Speaker 28 It's almost a media-free zone. Most information spreads here as it has for generations, by word of mouth, where facts, opinions, and gossip all swirled together as one.

Speaker 3 The news swept across the island like a rogue wave.

Speaker 10 Ryan Shinjo had been arrested, but not by the island cops, by the FBI.

Speaker 11 Then we hear that Ryan is gone to jail and we're like, oh my God, what?

Speaker 55 Did he do it?

Speaker 11 And then we hear, no, no, he went to to jail for drug dealing, which none of us knew he was a drug dealer. I had no idea he was a drug dealer.

Speaker 67 Ryan, it turned out, was a player in a big money drug trafficking ring, running meth from the mainland to Oahu to Kauai.

Speaker 67 Well, when people found out about that, rumors started to fly. Was Ryan using Sandra as an unwitting drug mule when he took her to Honolulu? Was she bringing back meth with her?

Speaker 11 Who knows? She may have been smuggling drugs in her new Louis Vuitton suitcases and not even knowing it, you know.

Speaker 5 And the final act of that story?

Speaker 34 Sandra found out about the drug ring and was killed before she could go to the police.

Speaker 2 But that was just a rumor, in a sea of rumors.

Speaker 28 Police didn't seem any closer to finding Sandra's killer, whoever it was.

Speaker 10 The case grew colder with each passing year.

Speaker 2 Larry still thought Darren killed Sandra, and it seemed wherever Larry went went on this small island, there he was.

Speaker 18 This is the house here with the boat and the truck in there.

Speaker 29 It's not easy going by here and knowing that he's still running free.

Speaker 21 We've got to get this case solved.

Speaker 28 On this day, Larry and Sandra's mom, Toshi, had to see Darren at grandson Austin's Little League game.

Speaker 65 That's Darren on the field coaching.

Speaker 47 And in the dugout with his girlfriend, Shireen, a woman he'd known since before Sandra's murder.

Speaker 23 And it was at this point, 2009, three years after Sandra's murder, when Larry felt the time had come for him to go from investigator to avenger.

Speaker 51 He was seriously thinking about killing Darren.

Speaker 39 If I ever figure out a way to get away with it,

Speaker 39 it'll happen.

Speaker 46 Fortunately, the arrival of a new Kauai police chief put his plans on hold.

Speaker 27 Darrell Perry, a 30-year veteran of the Honolulu PD, agreed to meet with Larry and listen to his theories about the case.

Speaker 24 He showed me the scene and he explained to me what happened and

Speaker 24 I could feel his grief.

Speaker 36 I mean, it wasn't of any forensic value to you to be there to look at it, was it?

Speaker 24 No, not at all.

Speaker 61 The point was what?

Speaker 24 The point was,

Speaker 24 I wanted him to realize that there is somebody there that's listening to him.

Speaker 61 So what did you do next?

Speaker 24 We went to her gravesite.

Speaker 24 We stood there and...

Speaker 61 What were you thinking about?

Speaker 24 I was thinking about

Speaker 24 the sadness

Speaker 24 in the loss of a child.

Speaker 61 There's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing like it.

Speaker 61 Nobody can understand unless they've been there.

Speaker 24 Not unless you've lost a child.

Speaker 16 Chief Perry was struggling to tell us that he did know what it was like to lose a child.

Speaker 50 He came out of retirement and took the job as head of the Kauai Police Department after the sudden death of his 26-year-old son, Erickson.

Speaker 24 I feel in a way that I'm working through him,

Speaker 24 that he motivates me. I believe that

Speaker 24 things happen for a reason. And in fact, I told Larry this.
I told him, there's a reason why we met. I don't know what the reasons are,

Speaker 24 but I'm here for you.

Speaker 16 So after meeting with Larry, Chief Perry sent Sandra's file to a couple of friends in Honolulu, investigators with the State Attorney General's Cold Case Unit.

Speaker 24 I asked them to see if they can find anything else that we may have missed.

Speaker 3 And they did indeed find something.

Speaker 28 Using what was breakthrough science for that time, early 2009, cold case investigators extracted touch DNA from Sandra's shirt and bra.

Speaker 27 Chief Perry called Larry with the news.

Speaker 56 And he said they got something.

Speaker 19 They re-scanned her clothes and they found two,

Speaker 56 how did he put it? Two microscopic particles

Speaker 19 of a male origin.

Speaker 59 Coming up,

Speaker 13 sometimes it's what you find and sometimes it's what you don't.

Speaker 64 Going through the calendar, it's pretty detailed from January 1st

Speaker 64 every day.

Speaker 13 But on the morning of Sandra's murder.

Speaker 64 You got nothing.

Speaker 16 It took a scientific breakthrough to finally get Larry Mandanza the help he was pleading for.

Speaker 28 Touch DNA, microscopic skin cells on Sandra's shirt and bra.

Speaker 61 It was a match to Darren.

Speaker 19 When that result came in, tell me what your first thoughts were.

Speaker 21 Who got him?

Speaker 17 But Larry was wary.

Speaker 29 It is an over you.

Speaker 16 Because what seemed like great evidence to the cops did not to the newly elected prosecuting attorney Shaylene Asari.

Speaker 43 For one simple reason, the DNA did not exclusively match Darren.

Speaker 55 It could have come from the two children.

Speaker 8 Larry, though, refused to be discouraged.

Speaker 56 The driving force is

Speaker 19 to get this case solved and put my daughter to rest. Because she isn't here.

Speaker 56 Hopefully it'll be this year.

Speaker 56 Hopefully it'll be 2009.

Speaker 56 We're close.

Speaker 50 But 2009 ended as it had begun with the case in stasis.

Speaker 2 No breaks, no leads, no arrests.

Speaker 63 And 2010 was no different.

Speaker 48 Same for 2011, nothing.

Speaker 16 It's fair to say Sandra's murder investigation was very much cold.

Speaker 33 So, 2012 now, six years after the murder and three years after that DNA test, Chief Perry gave the case to a new detective named Bryson Ponce.

Speaker 63 who re-examined the physical evidence like Sandra's car, undisturbed since the the day she was murdered.

Speaker 64 She was sitting down in the driver's seat and the from her waist up was pulled slouched over into the passenger seat.

Speaker 66 You said pulled was it appeared that it had been yanked over that way?

Speaker 61 It appeared that way.

Speaker 17 We

Speaker 41 believe that there was a struggle outside of the vehicle in the garage and

Speaker 21 That's due to some evidence that was on the outside front of the vehicle.

Speaker 17 What was it?

Speaker 41 Smudge marks, some air.

Speaker 74 When you look at how this homicide happened, it wasn't sexually motivated or it wasn't a robbery.

Speaker 20 It really was focused on anger.

Speaker 8 And so Ponce circled right back to those original two suspects, husband Darren, boyfriend Ryan.

Speaker 5 But which one?

Speaker 2 From the file, Ponce learned Ryan, in addition to being a drug trafficker, had also been convicted of domestic violence.

Speaker 52 And was there something fishy about how he found Sandra's body?

Speaker 47 He told the cops he he went to Sandra's house.

Speaker 62 Doors were locked.

Speaker 34 Said he peered through these ventilation slats at the base of her garage wall.

Speaker 62 Said he saw Sandra in her car.

Speaker 41 And

Speaker 74 calling out, Sandra, Sandra, and then he says that he couldn't get into the door. He called a friend to come and help him open the door.

Speaker 28 Called a friend to help him find a body?

Speaker 28 Wouldn't be the first time a guilty party did that.

Speaker 47 And did Ryan remain here at the scene, wait for the police officers and talk to them there?

Speaker 28 Was there anything in the report about his demeanor that night?

Speaker 74 You know, initially investigators thought that maybe he wasn't seeing everything that happened.

Speaker 54 He was holding back a little bit.

Speaker 74 Yeah, and maybe he was a little bit nervous.

Speaker 1 But Ryan had an alibi, right?

Speaker 7 He was at work when Sandra was killed.

Speaker 28 Well, Fonse found out the estimated time of Sandra's death was really more of a rough guess.

Speaker 25 And that Sandra could just as well have been murdered hours earlier when when Ryan wasn't at work.

Speaker 34 And then there were the results from Ryan's 2006 polygraph exam.

Speaker 3 What was the result of that?

Speaker 74 He was in view as past.

Speaker 5 Which didn't look good for Ryan.

Speaker 2 Except, Darren's polygraph result didn't look so great either.

Speaker 6 How did he do?

Speaker 70 He didn't do that good.

Speaker 20 He didn't pass.

Speaker 38 Now that was interesting.

Speaker 34 Both suspects failed the polygraph.

Speaker 45 So now Ponce looked at the evidence against Darren, who gave police two entirely different accounts of the morning of the murder.

Speaker 57 First, he said Sandra came by to get the kids, then a minute later said she didn't.

Speaker 44 Now remember, Darren and Sandra were going through a divorce in a heated child custody battle.

Speaker 59 So Darren apparently thought it'd be a good idea to take note of run-ins with Sandra.

Speaker 57 like the time she was late in picking up the boys, hoping it would one day help him in court.

Speaker 64 You know, going through the calendar, what I found really interesting is that it's pretty detailed from January 1st,

Speaker 64 every day all the way up until the 24th. It's the very last entry.
And on the 25th, you got nothing.

Speaker 52 Why is that important?

Speaker 16 Because Sandra was murdered that very morning, the morning of the 25th.

Speaker 53 About the time when she would have been picking up her sons.

Speaker 64 You would expect Aaron to have wrote down in there that Sandra never showed up to pick up the boys, that he had to take off from work.

Speaker 16 But he didn't. Nor did he call her to find out why she was a no-show.

Speaker 2 Ponce theorized that Sandra actually did go to Darren's house to get the boys, but there was an argument of some sort, and she left without them.

Speaker 3 Darren, still angry, followed her home.

Speaker 38 parking his truck on a street behind Sandra's cul-de-sac.

Speaker 64 This path, you you know, basically leads to the cul-de-sac and her house is just three houses down, right when you come to the end of this walkway. Very, very close, easy access.

Speaker 61 So you think that Darren came up, followed her, had the confrontation there, killed her with a ligature, choked her to death, then what did he do?

Speaker 64 You know, I think after the

Speaker 64 incident happened over here, he went back where he came and just took off and headed back home.

Speaker 34 And nobody saw him?

Speaker 64 You know, know,

Speaker 75 it was still dark.

Speaker 3 Ponce also found this email Sandra sent her lawyer just three weeks before her murder.

Speaker 10 Darren started asking me about my boyfriend, as he calls him, Ryan.

Speaker 50 He got really upset and started swearing at me.

Speaker 53 He started shaking me, telling me to tell him the truth and don't ever call him again.

Speaker 16 Ponce worked the investigation for close to a year.

Speaker 2 And as he weighed and re-weighed the evidence, he always came back to Darren,

Speaker 37 who lacked an alibi, who called in sick to work, who gave conflicting accounts about the morning of the murder, who left blank the diary entry for the 25th, who failed a polygraph, who was jealous of Ryan, who never called Sandy to find out why she didn't pick up the boys.

Speaker 2 Ponce delivered his final report to Chief Perry and Prosecutor Asseri and a handful of fellow investigators.

Speaker 55 We all believed it was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the case was not going to get any better than what we had.

Speaker 63 And Prosecutor Asseri finally agreed to present the case to a grand jury.

Speaker 16 And in October 2012, the grand jury indicted Darren for Sandra's murder.

Speaker 16 So, was Larry's quest for justice finally over?

Speaker 32 Oh no,

Speaker 49 not by a long shot.

Speaker 59 Coming up.

Speaker 14 We've got a problem here.

Speaker 13 A new prosecutor. A new delay.

Speaker 30 Kawai is a murder's paradise. If you want to kill somebody, come to Kawaii.

Speaker 13 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 34 On October 31st, 2012, Darren Gallas was charged with the murder of his wife, Sandra.

Speaker 48 He pleaded not guilty, was released on bail.

Speaker 2 Six and a half months later, on May 15, 2013, Sandra's dad, Larry, and Mom Toshi held this memorial dedication service outside Kauai's domestic violence center.

Speaker 43 Chief Perry was there, as was Bryson Ponce.

Speaker 8 But But Darren stayed away, as did Sandra's two sons.

Speaker 62 As most of you know, today is Sandy's birthday.

Speaker 62 And this is why it's...

Speaker 62 A very, very special day for us on Mahalo.

Speaker 16 At this point, Larry and Toshi thought they were in the home stretch, that Darren's trial was just months away.

Speaker 10 But the prosecuting attorney who indicted Darren lost her bid for re-election, defeated by this man, Justin Coller, who flat out accused his predecessor of bringing charges against Darren to make a splash and help her chances of re-election, though the case, he said, wasn't ready for trial.

Speaker 14 This case is the textbook example of why do not insert politics into people's lives

Speaker 14 and into their families.

Speaker 45 So now larry's quest for justice was mired in a political battle with the new prosecutor saying he couldn't proceed because the alternate suspect ryan shinjo had never been completely eliminated if you've got cases where you have multiple suspects and you're going to charge one of those suspects

Speaker 16 you better be sure you've excluded the other suspects former prosecutor shaylene asari fired back saying the entire investigative team voted to seek an indictment.

Speaker 55 The team decided unanimously. It wasn't Shaylene's decision.
It was the team's decision. I definitely feel that there was more than overwhelming evidence to convict Mr.
Gallus.

Speaker 67 You could have gotten that conviction.

Speaker 55 Oh, I definitely believe so.

Speaker 7 She's dreaming, said Caller.

Speaker 37 She never would have won.

Speaker 50 So Caller reopened the investigation.

Speaker 1 again

Speaker 76 and delayed the trial again while his office tried to strengthen the case.

Speaker 3 And the result was one trial delay after another.

Speaker 53 And three years later, 2015 now,

Speaker 10 Larry was one furious 74-year-old man.

Speaker 73 Kauai

Speaker 30 is a murder's paradise.

Speaker 56 If you want to kill somebody, come to Kauai and you've got probably about an 80-90% chance of getting away with it.

Speaker 76 And I firmly believe that.

Speaker 14 There was never any point during this process where the file was just sitting on the shelf getting dusty.

Speaker 14 There's always something that was being done, another piece of evidence that was being tested, another witness that was being looked for.

Speaker 23 But you must have been ready to let it go at some point.

Speaker 16 Say, you know, we can't do this, let's forget about it.

Speaker 14 That conversation happened any number of times over the years, but at each time we said, no, there's got to be a way to move this forward.

Speaker 16 It was Larry's kind of constant input part of the thing that kept you going here?

Speaker 14 Of course. I mean, none of us wanted to get that call saying,

Speaker 14 hey, Larry's,

Speaker 14 Larry wants to see you right away and he's not happy.

Speaker 16 When we spoke to Larry in 2015, Darren's trial was on the calendar for March of the following year.

Speaker 34 And the odds Larry gave of that happening?

Speaker 73 I would say probably a little better than 50-50.

Speaker 47 But even that was optimistic.

Speaker 45 The trial was delayed again until November 2016.

Speaker 38 But as that trial date approached, the defense requested another delay and the judge granted it.

Speaker 45 The case was continued to August 2017.

Speaker 2 And as that date approached, we look back on what Larry said to us in 2015.

Speaker 56 Someday this is going to get going to end,

Speaker 18 one way or another.

Speaker 56 And maybe I can rest a little bit.

Speaker 1 Early in the morning of the 14th of February, 2017, Larry Mandanza, aged 75, went out to play a round of golf, wasn't feeling well, called his son Lawrence in Texas, and told me he was having a heart attack and he was going to the emergency.

Speaker 31 What was that like?

Speaker 31 It was pretty intense, but being as stubborn as my dad is, he said, oh, don't worry about it. I'll be fine.
They're just going to put a stint in me. I'll be fine.

Speaker 31 I don't think he knew the magnitude of the situation at the time.

Speaker 13 Coming up, a father fights for his life.

Speaker 31 To see him in that hospital bed is tough.

Speaker 64 It's very tough.

Speaker 13 What will happen to his fight for justice?

Speaker 14 It's all about what you can prove in a court of law.

Speaker 48 Mary Mendanza didn't comprehend what was happening to him.

Speaker 25 as he walked this fairway, played his round of golf.

Speaker 5 It was only later when the doctor intervened, rushed him by air ambulance to Honolulu.

Speaker 58 Heart attack, then could tuckle bypass surgery,

Speaker 22 and then a stroke.

Speaker 31 It was difficult for me to see how vulnerable he was at that time.

Speaker 67 Because he'd always seemed like the invulnerable man.

Speaker 61 Correct.

Speaker 31 I mean, he was Superman to myself and my sister. And to see him in that situation, in that hospital bed, it was tough.

Speaker 64 It was very tough.

Speaker 43 It was sheer cussedness, probably, that pulled him back from the brink.

Speaker 19 My cardiologist says the whole thing was due to the 10, 12 years of stress.

Speaker 16 Larry spent months in physical therapy to build up the strength to attend Darren Gallas' trial scheduled for the summer of 2017.

Speaker 35 But it was delayed yet again.

Speaker 3 And Darren, during all this time?

Speaker 3 Out and about.

Speaker 60 This time we found him at Son Austin's soccer game.

Speaker 44 That's him wearing the black t-shirt, gold chain, and wraparound sunglasses.

Speaker 16 And in the blue shirt, his wife, Shireen.

Speaker 63 Larry and his wife, Toshi, were there at the soccer game, too.

Speaker 3 Always are.

Speaker 2 And what Larry felt in his chest was more rage than physical pain.

Speaker 73 Someday, I might lose it all. I really don't know what I'm going to do.

Speaker 73 You never know till it happens.

Speaker 45 Then, late 2017, a breakthrough.

Speaker 37 The prosecutor felt his investigators had finally and fully eliminated Ryan as a suspect, which now only left Darren in their sights.

Speaker 14 We had done some work over the years that had made the case somewhat better. Maybe Darren looked himself in the mirror and said,

Speaker 14 I know I did it. I don't know.

Speaker 14 But they said, we'll plead.

Speaker 10 But plead guilty to murder?

Speaker 42 No.

Speaker 52 Darren agreed to plead no contest to assault.

Speaker 3 You had a murder case here.

Speaker 65 No contest to assault sounds like not very bad.

Speaker 14 Well, we may

Speaker 14 think we have a murder case. We may know that he did it, but it's all about what you can prove in a court of law.

Speaker 51 And on January 29th, 2018, 12 years after Sandra's murder,

Speaker 57 we were with Larry outside the courthouse just an hour before the plea hearing, and as you might have guessed, he wasn't happy.

Speaker 76 There's

Speaker 56 no justice.

Speaker 23 What are the chances that thing could fall apart over there this morning?

Speaker 20 There's a possibility.

Speaker 66 I'm told he can change his mind at any given time up to the time he is sentenced.

Speaker 3 But what happened here?

Speaker 78 Now, drawing your attention to the no contest plea form.

Speaker 2 As Darren formally changed his plea from not guilty to murder two to no contest to assault one,

Speaker 43 thank you.

Speaker 60 Was not final resolution, but more delay.

Speaker 8 The court granted Darren four more months of freedom before sentencing.

Speaker 49 And Larry?

Speaker 42 Well.

Speaker 73 I'm very mad.

Speaker 16 I'm very upset.

Speaker 28 There was once a time, just after Sandra's murder, when Larry and Toshi were hoping to raise Sandra's boys.

Speaker 1 But now?

Speaker 76 He's been working on them for 12 years. He's been brainwashing them.
They hate their mother. They hate their grandparents.

Speaker 16 As he left court, Darren was protected by a phalanx of friends and relatives, which included the two grandsons.

Speaker 5 Darren declined to speak with us, but his defense lawyer, Michael Green, did stop to talk.

Speaker 79 There's a big difference between pleading no contest and pleading guilty.

Speaker 35 It certainly suggests he did something to her.

Speaker 3 Well, he assaulted her.

Speaker 54 That very day, but he didn't kill her.

Speaker 79 He doesn't admit that he assaulted her. No contest means he neither admits nor denies the charges.

Speaker 22 But now, for four months, uncertainty.

Speaker 35 Because the judge had the power to sentence Darren to anything from 10 years in prison to probation.

Speaker 30 What I foresee at sentencing, they're going to ask for leniency.

Speaker 57 Do you think he could actually avoid going to prison altogether?

Speaker 56 At this point, I wouldn't put anything past them.

Speaker 4 On May 30th, 2018, we were back outside the courthouse with Larry Mendanza.

Speaker 34 This time, he was the one surrounded by supporters.

Speaker 3 A 12-year investigation, now reduced to just an hour in court, that felt as stressful and tense as any jury trial.

Speaker 2 Would Darren be carted off to prison? Or would the judge give him probation and send him home?

Speaker 2 Darren's lawyer, Michael Green, reminded the judge there had been an alternate suspect.

Speaker 36 This guy Sinju, who was a person of interest the entire time.

Speaker 37 Then he told the judge to remember, this was not a murder case.

Speaker 36 There's an agreement that my client will plead guilty to nothing.

Speaker 42 Nothing.

Speaker 36 He's offered to plead no contest to an assault charge.

Speaker 10 And then Larry got his chance, finally, to let 12 years of pain pour out, starting with that first awful night when he broke the news to Toshi.

Speaker 72 How do you tell a woman

Speaker 72 that the baby she had once nursed, fallen asleep in her arms,

Speaker 73 played on her lap,

Speaker 72 skipped off to school clutching the lunch that she had made for her, was now dead. We received a life sentence

Speaker 40 full of pain, sorrow, agony, and frustration.

Speaker 72 A life sentence with no parole.

Speaker 19 Sending that eternity.

Speaker 16 Darren stoically sat through it all.

Speaker 17 And then

Speaker 8 what sentence would the judge impose?

Speaker 60 She began by quoting Darren's attorney.

Speaker 78 And that is that he pled no contest to the charge of assault in the first degree. That's what this sentencing is about.

Speaker 16 And Larry's stomach started to tighten.

Speaker 19 And my lawyer reached over and says,

Speaker 66 this doesn't sound good.

Speaker 43 And then, six minutes into her ruling, finally,

Speaker 49 here it was.

Speaker 78 You are hereby ordered committed to the custody of the director of the Department of Public Safety for imprisonment for a period of 10 years.

Speaker 69 10 years.

Speaker 43 The maximum she could oppose.

Speaker 6 And with that, the Mendanza family's 12-year quest for justice came to an end.

Speaker 66 That was my graveyard promise to my daughter.

Speaker 19 I fulfilled it.

Speaker 19 I believe that you'll always be my heart.

Speaker 8 Larry and Toshi follow a series of rituals on the anniversary of Sandra's death.

Speaker 2 They bring flowers to her memorial outside the YWCA, have lunch at the beach house restaurant where Sandra once worked.

Speaker 38 And they pray by her graveside at Holy Cross Cemetery, where she is surrounded by her ancestors.

Speaker 35 Sandra, so homesick when away from this island she loved,

Speaker 22 is now forever a part of it.

Speaker 15 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 16 Thanks for joining us.

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