Ex-lover receives life for murder of Maui woman

Nine years and 14 days after 46-year-old Moreira Monsalve’s disappearance, a Maui Circuit Court judge sentenced her ex-boyfriend Bernard Brown on Thursday to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole for killing the Maui mother of three.

But despite Brown’s Aug. 25 jury conviction on second-degree murder, the sentence may have rung a bit hollow for her loved ones since Brown has not divulged where he hid her body.

Daughter Alexis Feli­cilda, who was 27 at the time of her disappearance, said her mother has missed seeing her youngest, Tyson, graduate from university and become a firefighter, and missed becoming a grandmother, seeing her son Lono’s two boys.

She told Brown it was a bittersweet moment, but her mother “lives on through us.”

“You could make your life a little easier by telling us where she is,” and ease some of the guilt, her eldest, Alexis Felicilda, 27 at the time of her disappearance, told Brown. She told him he deserves to pay for his selfishness and vindictiveness.

Monsalve, who recently had broken up with Brown, was last seen at his Wailuku apartment on Jan. 12, 2014. Her purse, phone and paperwork were recovered from a dumpster at a Wailuku park, but her body was never found.

Judge Peter Cahill, after hearing the sentiments of Monsalve’s relatives, said life with the possibility of parole is the only sentence he could legally impose, since life without parole would have had to have been part of the charging document and require prior jury approval.

“In some respects this is an unfulfilled resolution to this,” Cahill said. “If somehow I could give you what you really want to know, I would do it.

“If I had it within my power, I would, but I just don’t.”

Cahill said this case is unlike the Stephen Brown case, in which an Oahu jury Tuesday approved extended sentencing, giving the judge the option of life without the possibility of parole at sentencing.

(Stephen Brown was convicted Jan. 20 of a brutal murder, kidnapping and burglary in the death of a woman whose body was found in a vacation rental. The state asked for extended sentencing based on multiple felony convictions.)

Deputy Prosecutor J.W. Hupp said the state lacked the required elements.

“In our case it was a circumstantial case. We never did find where he hid her body. If it is life without parole, a particularly heinous, atrocious or cruel case, we can’t show that. In order to get that enhancement, we have to show some of those factors. Unfortunately, in this case we just don’t know.”

Maui police came under fire from the public because little information was shared, and it appeared no progress was being made in both the Monsalve case and the disappearance of a Maui woman, Carly “Charli” Scott, 27, which occurred Feb. 9, 2014, less than a month later. Scott’s body was later found.

On Feb, 17, 2014, police identified both women’s ex-boyfriends as persons of interest but said they had nothing to hold Brown, who already had left the state. In the end, both were found guilty of murder.

Hupp said Monsalve was universally loved and that hundreds of people, week after week, searched for her. And of the roughly 75 possible witnesses police spoke to, all were willing to testify, even those on the mainland, and no one had a negative word about her.

After the sentencing, Hupp said police were stretched thin with the two cases.

The investigation took years, and Brown was finally indicted Sept. 20, 2019, and arrested in California and extradited to Maui.

An FBI analysis of Monsalve’s phone, broken into pieces, revealed Brown had used it to make flight reservations to San Jose.

Hupp said there was a flurry of activity on Brown’s IP address in the early evening hours of Jan. 12, 2014, and the early morning hours of the next day.

“The trail of evidence led back to him,” he said.

Police managed to piece together evidence, including statements he made.

But one post made on social media by Brown stuck with Hupp: “I’m proud of my heart. It’s been played, cheated and broken, but it still works.”

“It was a boast,” he said. “He had killed Monsalve. Even though her heart had stopped beating,” his still worked.