On Thursday, 20 June 2019, I sat in the observer section of the Aha Kaulike room, a court room on the fourth floor of the Federal Building in Honolulu, which houses the United States District Court, District of Hawaii. It was the last day of evidence to be presented in the infamous case of the stolen mailbox. I had been reading about this drama for years. It was finally coming to a head, so I figured I would check it out in person. The time was 0828 and the only people in the room were me, three other observers, and two court employees sitting in the section below the judge’s bench. Court was to start at 0845. I was surprised there weren’t more people here.
The next two people to enter the room shuffled by me in color coordinated outfits, like they had throughout the trial. But the colors weren’t as bright and festive as I’d often seen them wearing on TV during the past year. Dark brown and black were the colors of the day, although Katherine did have small red flowers on her dark brown shirt. Louis had a black suit over a dark brown aloha shirt. It appears the colors have become more subdued as the trial nears its end, and the net around them tightens. Neither is smiling.
The other defendants and a pack of lawyers soon filed in, along with a few other observers. The judge rolled in at 0848, and the show began.
The federal case against Louis and Katherine Kealoha, as well as three police officers, is coming to conclusion. Louis was the former Honolulu Chief of Police, and Katherine a former Honolulu Deputy Prosecutor. This is the biggest legal and law enforcement corruption case in the history of Honolulu. Thank goodness the feds came in to dredge this cesspool of corrupt local power.
It started with a stolen mailbox from the Kealoha house in 2013. A weird-looking security video of the robbery shows a grainy picture of a guy stopping his car in front of the house, casually getting out of the car, gently lifting the mailbox off its post, then calmly putting the mailbox in the back seat of the car and driving off.
The Kealoha’s identified the person seen on the security camera taking the mailbox as Gerard Puana, Katherine’s uncle, who was subsequently arrested and charged. That criminal trial took place in 2014.
The 2014 trial of Gerard Puana fell apart quickly. Despite the thief on the video being identified by Katherine Kealoha as Uncle Gerard, the guy in the video did not have a stocky build like Gerard Puana. Also, why was the mailbox not secured to the post? The guy in the video didn’t use any tools, and instead just lifted the box off the post. The prosecution identified the car as the same type as Gerard Puana’s neighbor, implying he borrowed the neighbor’s car. But the attorney for the defense had independent experts enhance the video, and the car was clearly seen not to be the same type as the neighbor’s car. When defense attorneys asked for additional hours from the hard drive of the security cameras, the hard drive was then mysteriously erased while in police custody. The prosecution’s case to frame Gerard Puana had big problems. Then, Chief of Police Louis Kealoha took the stand and incorrectly told the jury that Puana was convicted for unlawfully entering a neighbor’s home two years earlier. Chief Kealoha’s statement derailed this 2014 trial and prevented Puana’s defense team from further establishing he was being framed. The judge declared a mistrial.
I’m sure the Kealoha’s hoped the scuttled 2014 trial would be the end of the matter, but it was not to be. Too much monkey business was exposed and the feds were now involved. In October 2015 a federal special prosecutor was appointed to investigate alleged public corruption and abuse of power in Hawaii. This current 2019 conspiracy trial is the first of two or three cases stemming from this federal investigation.
Prosecutors say the five defendants, the Kealohas and three police officers, tried to frame Gerard Puana. Prosecutors say the framing was an effort to discredit Gerard Puana, and perhaps pressure him to drop a 2013 lawsuit that he and his mother, Florence Puana, filed against Katherine Kealoha. They allege Katherine Kealoha stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from them. Evidence presented in this current trial includes forged signatures and fraudulent documents allegedly manufactured by Katherine Kealoha in order to steal money from her grandmother in a reverse mortgage scheme.
Earlier this month Florence Puana, Katherine’s grandmother testified via video recording. She is now 99 years old and in failing health, so the judge allowed her testimony to be videotaped two months ago, to ensure she had her day in court. She cried when a federal prosecutor asked her about her relationship with her granddaughter, Katherine Kealoha. She was obviously hurt by the betrayal of her granddaughter, who Puana said not only stole her money and forced her to sell her home, but also tried to have her declared incompetent and have her son jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, i.e., the mailbox theft.
One of the officers who previously pleaded guilty was Niall Silva, who testified that he falsified police reports, lied during Puana’s criminal trial in December 2014 and deceived both the FBI and a federal grand jury about his role in the alleged frame job.
One interesting aspect of this case involves the mysterious Alison Lee Wong. Let me be more clear, the fictitious Alison Lee Wong. Federal prosecutors called several witnesses and introduced many documents as evidence to prove Wong does not exist. Witnesses testified that Katherine Kealoha used the name “Kathryn Aloha” to order a notary seal and metal embosser for a Hawaii-based notary named Alison Lee Wong, but there’s no record of such a person existing as a notary in the state. Ms. Wong’s notary stamp and signature verified many dubious (prosecutors say forged) documents used by Ms. Kealoha in her dirty financial dealings. The fraudulent Alison Lee Wong will be a key player when the Kealohas face a second trial for alleged financial crimes, including bank fraud.
Katherine Kealoha has also been accused in a separate case of helping her younger brother Rudolph Puana, a physician, run an illegal prescription drug operation, to include using her position as a city prosecutor to cover it up.
Closing arguments for the stolen mailbox trial will likely be Tuesday, 25 June, and then it will be up to the jury. The defense will argue that the prosecution is relying solely on circumstantial evidence, but from my study, there’s enough circumstantial evidence to bury a battle ship. All five should go to prison, in the humble opinion of this roving reporter from Waipahu.
I’ll bet the room will be more crowded on Tuesday, when closing arguments will be presented. I might go on down and see if they have room for one more. We’ll see.
Waipahu Bob 