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When Lori Vallow Daybell washed up on Kauai, people started to wonder why a lady who was running from questions came running to their island. Apparently, the Idaho woman with her heap of troubles — including several suspicious deaths of close relatives and the disappearance of her two children — had ties to the island, but still, why there? Is Kauai a good place to hide out? Did Kauai have a reputation for a certain level of lawlessness, the sort of place where “live and let live” translates into some very bad “anything goes” complacency? You know, the kind of town where a local elected official can drive crazy down the road in the middle of the day and still keep his government job?
Troubling. And also, troubling that Keith Morrison keeps showing up. Morrison, the reporter for NBC’s “Dateline,” travels to back-road American towns to tell stories about bizarre murder mysteries and twisted crimes. On Kauai, Morrison tracked the story of Sandy Galas, a murder victim whose father led an agonizing 12-year campaign for justice before Sandy’s estranged husband was finally arrested (though he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge in connection with the murder.)
Morrison came back again for the Daybell case. It’s not good when Keith Morrison keeps coming back to do stories in your town.
But then Daybell was arrested last week. That was the first sign, like when an iwa bird is circling in a milky sky. Something’s coming.
Then, on Friday morning, Kenji Price stormed into Lihue and blew down some doors.
Price, U.S. attorney for Hawaii, assembled a phalanx of law enforcement officials from multiple agencies and started rattling off the indictment aimed at taking down a drug ring they believe was led by Kauai County Councilman Arthur Brun.
As a candidate, Brun had talked about his past troubles with crystal methamphetamine, as well as convictions for theft and family abuse, but his had been a story of redemption embraced by voters. He campaigned on giving back to the community and doing what is right, and was seen by supporters as a voice for the working people on Kauai who remember what the island was like when their grandparents and great-grandparents were the ones taking care of things.
Then, he started missing Council meetings and driving crazy down the road, and again, the question: what is tolerated on the island that shouldn’t be?
In the indictment, the federal prosecutor alleges, among other things, that Brun would warn his drug ring associates, telling them on one occasion not to go to Port Allen because there were “undercover cars down there” or not to meet in Hanapepe town because there were cops in the area.
Nice to know that criminals do worry about cops in the area.
When the U.S. attorney, Kauai police chief, Homeland Security, FBI, ATF, U.S. marshals, Coast Guard and investigators from the U.S. Postal Service all lined up in Lihue on Friday morning, it made quite a statement that there are, in fact, cops in the area, and that Kauai is not a place where anything goes.
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