Hawaii County police have arrested the parents of a missing boy, Peter Kema Jr., on drug and weapons offenses after serving a search warrant in a welfare fraud investigation.

Police said that officers arrested Peter J. Kema Sr., of Pahoa, on suspicion of ownership of a prohibited firearm, ownership of prohibited ammunition, altering a serial number on a firearm, second-degree promotion of a detrimental drug and fourth-degree promotion of a harmful drug at 2:25 p.m. today. 

His wife, Jaylin M. Kema, was arrested Tuesday at a home on Uilani Drive in the Ainaloa subdivision in Puna on suspicion of theft.

The Hawaii Police Department was asked to assist the Department of Human Services’ Welfare Fraud Investigation Division with the execution of a search warrant.

During the search, police also recovered items unrelated to the DHS investigation.

On Wednesday morning, while Jaylin Kema was still at the cellblock, police arrested her on suspicion of ownership prohibited of a firearm, altering a serial number on a firearm, second-degree promotion of a detrimental drug and fourth-degree promotion of a harmful drug. 

No charges have been filed and police are continuing their investigation in the alleged theft, drug and firearms violations.

The disappearance of 6-year-old known as "Peter Boy" in 1997 is considered one of Hawaii’s most notorious unsolved cases.

Last year, Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth said police were interviewing people again and pursuing new information in the case

The mystery of what happened to Peter Boy, whom state records showed suffered repeated abuse in his short life, has persisted, ever since Peter Boy’s father told authorities he gave his son to a longtime family friend while on a job-hunting trip to Oahu.

Police were unable to verify the existence of Auntie Rose Makuakane, the woman who Kema said took custody of Peter Boy in the summer of 1997. Peter Boy’s mother did not report her son missing until January 1998.

Big Island police initially investigated Peter Boy’s disappearance as a missing-person case but changed it to a homicide investigation when they turned over the files to prosecutors in 2000.

No body was ever found, and no one was ever charged or arrested in the case.

Peter Boy and two older siblings were removed from their home by child welfare authorities shortly after Peter Boy’s birth in 1991 because of reports of child abuse. They eventually were reunited with their parents, but reports of abuse continued to surface. When Peter Boy was 3 months old, he was hospitalized with multiple new and healing fractures on his body.

Records released in 2005 by the Department of Human Services, which investigates child abuse cases, revealed that Peter Boy’s sister told a psychologist nearly a year after her brother disappeared that she saw his dead body on two occasions.