Murdered Hawaii Teen ‘Had a Bright Future’

Lisa Au had her whole life ahead of her.

A 19-year-old hairdresser at the Susan Beers Salon in Kailua, a small town on the windward side of the Oahu island in Hawaii, Au was “always a happy girl with big dreams” who went out of her way to help people.

“Lisa was a beautiful girl and a very pleasant person to be around,” Roy Chang, a lawyer for the Au family, told The Daily Beast. “I never heard anything negative about it. She seemed like a very nice girl who had a bright future.”

But the teenager’s bright future came crashing down on Jan. 20. 1982, after she finished up work around 9 p.m. and headed to meet her boyfriend at his sister’s apartment half an hour away in Makiki. Police reports state that she headed home shortly after dinner amid a particularly heavy rain storm.

That was the last time Au was seen alive.

The Honolulu Police Department told The Daily Beast they first received reports that the teenager was missing that next morning, when Au did not return home or answer her family. Police say that Au’s parents called her boyfriend, who went out to search for her—and instead found her 1976 Toyota parked on the side of a Maunawili highway and flooded with at least 2 inches of water.

The harrowing discovery prompted a 10-day search and immediately instilled fear across the Honolulu community. Thousands of flyers were distributed across the island and hundreds of volunteers searched for the teenager.

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Ultimately, on Jan. 31, 1982, police say Au’s nude body was found in a ravine off of Tantalus Drive about three miles from the apartment where she was last seen. The discovery turned a frantic missing person’s case into a homicide case—that remains open four decades later. While authorities have never officially identified or charged an individual in Au’s murder, the case has been marred by wrongful allegations a police officer may have been involved and a civil lawsuit filed by the teenager’s family over the department’s inaction.

Even more heartbreaking is the reality that Au’s parents, Patrice and Chester Au, will never know what happened to their eldest daughter. Chang, who was hired by the family to help “find answers and hold police accountable,” said the couple was never the same after their daughter died and never “found peace of mind” before they passed.

“Unfortunately, there is no closure,” Chang said. “They were looking for some answers and they were never answered. It’s sad knowing they will never know what happened to their daughter, even after they fought so hard for answers.”

But despite the past mistakes in the case and the lack of answers, the Honolulu Police Department insists the case “is still considered an open investigation as there is no statute of limitations for homicide.”

Au’s family did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

The questions into what happened to Au began almost hours after she left her boyfriend’s sister’s apartment that rainy January night.

According to police reports first obtained by Hawaii News Now, Au’s parents and roommate called the teenager’s boyfriend, Doug Holmes, on Jan. 21 1982 after not hearing from their daughter. Holmes, a University of Hawaii student, immediately began to look for his girlfriend and retrace her last steps.

“[Holmes] told police he said goodnight to Au in her car and did not actually see her drive away,” a February 1982 Honolulu Star-Bulletin article reported, noting that it “was a stormy night and Au had called her roommate to tell her she was on her way home” but failed to make it there. “Holmes went out looking for Au afraid that she may have gotten into a traffic accident.”

During his search, Holmes found his girlfriend’s car—and immediately called authorities. The police report notes that Holmes indicated there was about “two or three inches of water” on the floor of Au’s car and the driver’s seat was completely “drenched.” But the teenager’s purse, which had her wallet and keys but did not have her temporary license, was completely dry on the driver’s side seat. (Holmes, who now lives in Australia, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.)

“That was one of the first indications that something bad may have happened here,” Chang said. “If she had had car trouble and got a ride with someone, why would she have left her purse? And why was her purse dry but everything else was soaking wet from the rain that night?”

The oddities in Au’s disappearance quickly spread throughout Honolulu, and slews of volunteers came out to aid in the search for the missing teenager. A Jan. 30, 1982 article in the Honolulu Advertiser reported that 150,000 flyers were distributed by seven Oahu high school students on Au’s behalf.

The desperate search ended in the afternoon of Jan. 31, when a man jogging on Mount Tantalus with his dog came across a horrifying discovery: Au’s body. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported at the time that Au, who was nude, was found about “40 feet down an embankment” and witnesses at the scene claimed she was “facedown in tall grass as if it had been dumped from the side of the road.”

Because of the advanced state of decomposition, it would ultimately take the Honolulu medical examiner’s office several days to identify Au, noting to local outlets at the time that it was “impossible to get fingerprints from the body” and that they ultimately had to use dental records. Local reports also stated that Au’s high school class ring, which had her initials engraved in it and was on her hand when she was discovered, was crucial for the identification.

The medical examiner’s office could never conclude Au’s cause of death, partially due to the lack of forensic evidence at the time and the state of the body when it was found. The Honolulu medical examiner’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The grisly discovery, however, did immediately pivot the frantic missing person’s case into a homicide investigation—and began the rumor mill in Hawaii about who could possibly be Au’s killer.

One theory was that Au’s boyfriend had something to do with her death. In an interview with police, Hawaii News Now reported, Holmes even admitted he knew he was a suspect in the case—and failed two lie detector tests. When asked why he kept failing the tests, Holmes told police that he felt guilty for Au’s death because he let her drive alone that night, even though the weather was severe.

Authorities later believed Holmes’ explanation, noting that he had no motive to kill Au. While Holmes did not respond to a request for comment, he and his family did tell Hawaii News Now in 2019 that “Lisa and her memory deserve justice”

Bert Corniel was a lieutenant assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division of the Honolulu Police Department when Au’s case was moved to his team. In an interview with Hawaii News Now, Corniel said one theory that was posed to police was the idea that an officer—or someone posing as an officer—could have been involved in the crime. One witness, according to police reports and local outlets at the time, stated that the night Au disappeared she saw a car with blue lights in the grill following her car.

A February 1982 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin notes that the accusation caused such a mass panic in the community that the department was forced to ban hidden blue lights on police cars—instead opting for a “large blue light—either dome or bar style—on the roofs of police vehicles” to identify themselves. The article notes that after Au’s murder, they received “a rash of reports by women claiming they were stopped by men posing as police officers by flashing blue lights otherwise hidden behind their car grills.”

Corniel, however, noted the mass panic over police officers may have pushed the department to continue with their investigation into one officer, and even convened a grand jury based on their evidence. But prosecutors were unable to secure an indictment because of lack of evidence.

“They had formulated premature conclusions,” Corniel told Hawaii News Now. (Corniel did not respond to a request for comment.)

Ultimately, that officer filed a $20 million lawsuit against a TV station, the former Honolulu Police chief, and a detective for wrongfully identifying him as a suspect. James Leavitt, who represented the officer in his 1984 lawsuit, told The Daily Beast that the case did not have a legal conclusion.

“Our basis for the suit was invasion of privacy,” Leavitt added. “But it did not go very far. I think we ultimately came to our senses and realized it was going to be a tremendous battle.”

Around that time, Chang said he was brought on by Au’s parents after it became clear to them that they needed help “to determine who the killer was.”

“They wanted answers and wanted to know the legal avenues they could take to get some,” Chang said.

Among those avenues for answers was a civil lawsuit against the police department, arguing that two officers drove past Au the night she went missing and that no action was taken against the officers who drove by her and did nothing. “To us, the police officers have a duty to assist motorists,” Chang said. “Do not drive by and ignore it.”

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Ultimately, however, the civil lawsuit also ended in a dead end at the Hawaii Supreme Court, which sided with the Honolulu Police Department’s argument that it was not an officer’s duty to stop and render aid unless there is any indication a citizen is in distress.

“The end of our civil case was another shot in the gut for Lisa’s parents,” Chang said. “They lost their daughter, the prosecution could not come up with the indictment, and then the Hawaii Supreme Court said we have no claim.”

Chang said that after that final loss, his services for the Au family were not long needed—but he still kept tabs on the case he said could have been solved years ago.

“It’s not shocking that this case has never been solved. All the key witnesses are now all gone so it makes it even harder,” he added. “We tried every avenue in our case and it failed. I just hope the police are still doing everything they can on their end so Lisa’s family can finally get some justice.”

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