The county prosecutor says he’s hopeful new leads in the case of Peter Kema Jr., aka “Peter Boy,” will allow him to go to a grand jury for indictment in 2015.
The county prosecutor says he’s hopeful new leads in the case of Peter Kema Jr., aka “Peter Boy,” will allow him to go to a grand jury for indictment in 2015.
“Thats my hope,” Mitch Roth said Thursday. “We have been investigating the case. The police are investigating it and we’re still following leads. We haven’t made a charging decision yet but we believe we’ll make a charging decision in a reasonable time.”
Peter Boy was only 6 when he disappeared in 1997. His father, Peter Kema Sr., said he took the child to Oahu and gave the boy to an “Aunty Rose Makuakane” as a hanai, or informal Hawaiian adoption. Neither authorities nor the public believed the story and police and prosecutors are investigating the case as a murder.
Kema and his wife, Jaylin Kema, Peter Boy’s mother, have not been charged with a crime connected to the disappearance, although they were provided a court-appointed attorney, a rare occurrence when no charges have been filed.
Lillian Koller, then state Health and Human Services Director, released thousands of pages of Child Protective Service files documenting years of abuse suffered by Peter Boy and his siblings at the hands of Peter Kema. Peter Boy was taken from the Kemas by CPS but was returned to the couple prior to the youngster’s disappearance.
A younger sister of Peter Boy’s told a psychologist in 1998 she saw the boy “dead in her father’s trunk.” The girl, then 5, also said she saw “Peter Boy in a box ‘dead’ in her parents closet and they took the box to Honolulu.”
Peter Boy’s older sister, Chauntelle Acol, still holds out hope her brother is alive.
“Maybe it’s delusional,” she said Thursday. “… I want closure for the family; I don’t want closure for myself. Obviously, if they’re gonna push it forward for murder, they have evidence to back it up. For me, I would rather have him come home safe and sound, or at least alive, instead of the opposite.”
See tomorrow’s Tribune-Herald for a more detailed story.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.