A 29-year-old Hilo man was indicted Wednesday by a Hilo grand jury for allegedly strangling his 24-year-old girlfriend to death almost 2 1/2 years ago.
The indictment charges Ekolu Keolanui with second-degree murder for the death of Sable-Marie Keffer-Young.
According to county Prosecutor Kelden Waltjen, the murder charge stems from a domestic incident that occurred July 19, 2019, at Malama Park in Pana‘ ewa.
Keolanui currently is serving a 10-year prison term for a 2017 domestic incident in which he kidnapped and sexually assaulted Keffer-Young. He was convicted in 2020.
Keffer-Young was the daughter of kumu hula Sammye Ku‘ualoha Young.
Keolanui, who remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail on the murder charge, is scheduled to appear for arraignment and plea today in Hilo Circuit Court.
Keffer-Young’s death initially was reported as a suicide, said Hawaii Police Department Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins, commander of the Area I Criminal Investigation Division in Hilo.
Amon-Wilkins said Keolanui was the reporting party.
“There was some suspicion of foul play from the beginning,” he said. “There wasn’t enough evidence initially to reclassify it to a murder.”
According to Amon-Wilkins, the homicide case, which wasn’t made public by the police, was routed to the prosecutor’s office on March 17, 2020.
“There was a delay in getting this to a grand jury,” Amon-Wilkins said. “March of 2020 was … the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so there was an issue of scheduling the grand jury at that point.”
Amon-Wilkins said the initial autopsy on Keffer-Young’s body, which was performed by Dr. Lindsey Harle, revealed “multiple injuries which included evidence of blunt-force trauma and strangulation,” but the initial conclusion of Harle’s report on cause of death was “undetermined.”
Detective Derek Morimoto, the lead investigator in the case, contacted Dr. Bill Smock, the police surgeon for the Louisville Police Department in Kentucky, Amon-Wilkins said.
“He is an expert on strangulation,” Amon-Wilkins said.
Smock testified in the case of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted and sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, who died after Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for approximately 10 minutes in front of a crowd.
Smock, according to Amon-Wilkins, came to the Big Island and reviewed evidence including the police reports, autopsy report and the alleged crime scene.
“His expert opinion is that it was not a suicide, and that was a key factor in this case being reclassified from a suicide to a homicide,” Amon-Wilkins said.
Amon-Wilkins said Smock also testified before the grand jury that indicted Keolanui.
“The timeline of March 2020 to now, a lot of that was the availability of a grand jury, as well as the availability of Dr. Smock to testify for us in front of the grand jury,” Amon-Wilkins said. “Even after things somewhat opened up, the Judiciary required a 10-day quarantine of anybody from out of state to even enter the court building.
“It just wasn’t feasible to have a witness fly here and then have to wait 10 days before they could enter the court building to testify, but Dr. Smock did come here this week to testify in front of the grand jury.”
Both Waltjen and Amon-Wilkins praised Morimoto for his work in what Waltjen described as a “cold case investigation.”
“I have to give credit to the fantastic work that Detective Morimoto did because this was not an easy case to solve,” Amon-Wilkins said.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.