- 11 minutes ago
"It’s the first and, I believe, the only serial homicide case in Hawaii," Mohandie said of The Honolulu Strangler.
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00:03You're watching another episode of In Studio. I'm Brian Parika and today we're joined with Derek
00:08Levasseur and Chris Mohandy of Investigation Discoveries Breaking Homicide. That was a
00:13mouthful but thanks for coming in. How are you guys doing? Great thanks for having us. Now for
00:18those who haven't I guess watched the series yet can kind of talk us through it and kind of explain
00:23like what your backgrounds are that make you qualified to open up these cases again and
00:27re-examine them. Sure. I'm a clinical police and forensic psychologist. I've been doing this kind
00:32of work for over 25 years and I've interviewed hundreds of offenders who've killed a lot of
00:39people and I've interviewed a lot of victims and looked at a lot of crime scenes and I've testified
00:43in all kinds of murder cases and regularly consult to investigations throughout my career. I was
00:50an investigator for 13 years. I spent time in the patrol division, investigative division, special
00:55investigations unit. I was undercover for three years. I had the opportunity to supervise a couple
00:59different task force, worked with the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, ATF and yeah it was a good experience.
01:06A lot of advanced training and interview interrogation tactics as well. That's great. Now in terms of
01:10breaking homicide, how did you guys go about like which cases you would re-examine? I know the first
01:15one for you was a personal one. That was a no-brainer yeah. The first one was going back to
01:20my
01:21hometown and working on a case that I've known about for years and just taking a fresh look
01:25at it with Chris after doing the OJ series together. I'll let you explain the other one.
01:29Yeah, what happened was we were in the car on the OJ case and Derek said I got a case
01:34you
01:34absolutely have to see and it was the Michelle Norris case and so even before this show was
01:40even conceived it was already on Derek's mind and both of us have a commitment to doing cases
01:45that speak to you know the average person's experience as opposed to something that's you
01:50know some super high profile you know celebrity type case if you will and what ended up happening
01:55as the OJ series rolled out was a number of people reached out to us and that led us to
02:01start taking
02:02in cases that you know viewers were experiencing that they'd had unresolved and that was how this series
02:10was born. Yeah and as far as selecting we wanted to go with cases that we felt there was some
02:14solvability there's something we could do with the advancement of technology and science that maybe
02:18had different from what was done when it originally occurred so we went through the list we picked an
02:24eclectic group of cases to try to show a range and we wish we could have done more but we
02:28you know
02:28we went with six for the first season. Now in the Michelle Norris case you talk about how Julie
02:32had her mother Julie had reached out to you about though kind of looking at this case again in terms
02:37of the other cases though what were the challenges of getting people to reopen these wounds talk about these cases
02:42again
02:43well the idea of reopening of being filmed yeah the idea of reopening wounds these victims families
02:50live with this every single day of their lives this is not something that goes away it may be on
02:56a
02:56back burner a police department not because they don't want to solve it but because there's nothing
03:00new to help them solve it and maybe they need a fresh perspective maybe but for the victims for the
03:08families that are wondering what happened they live with it every day and so they're very interested
03:14in getting some answers and that's how it happened you know it was some people may not want to go
03:21on
03:21camera and talk about it and that's understandable and that's certainly respected but there's a lot of
03:26people that say you know we've tried other things let's see what happens and you and you will see with
03:30all the cases as you saw you're going to talk about Hawaii a little bit that uh and for most
03:34of these cases they
03:35wanted our help so they they we went there knowing that they this is something they wanted to happen
03:40they wanted to bring a new level of exposure to their to their loved ones case so it wasn't too
03:44hard to speak with them at all no and for the most part were there any cases that you weren't
03:49able
03:49to kind of re-examine because people didn't want to be involved and be filmed or no i mean honestly
03:54we
03:54wouldn't have taken a case on that didn't want our help it wasn't something where we like hey listen
03:58we're just going to highlight this case and hope we can help without their permission either a friend or
04:02family member or a community member reached out to us and said listen we really think there's
04:06something here will you help and that's kind of what this is investigation discovery has been
04:10receiving calls from their audiences and emails from their audiences for years saying will you help
04:15us we relate to your shows because we've had similar situations happen to us will you help and we
04:20think breaking homicide is a start to answering those calls for help now in terms of the Honolulu
04:25strangler what was it about that case that got you to want to well it's the first and i believe
04:31only
04:31serial homicide case in hawaii there may have been another one but this is kind of the first one
04:37it was unsolved and it affected that community significantly and it was never solved interestingly
04:44it came up on the heels in the time period of the green river killing case which was in seattle
04:49and
04:49the pacific northwest but um you know paradise a place that you're supposed to go to to feel safe
04:56and here you have you know a number of people that have turned up dead murdered and it needed to
05:03be
05:03answered i've done a lot of work in hawaii throughout the years i have family there
05:07um and i had friends that worked at the police department one of whom i reached out to because
05:12the police didn't cooperate in terms of this case i wouldn't say that well the police were very
05:17cooperative they didn't give you files though they didn't give us files but i will say it didn't
05:20make the episode but we actually did sit down with the chief of the active chief of police in the
05:24Honolulu police department and she was amazing and she told us some things that we kind of known from
05:28our own investigation but she basically said to us hey listen like like all the departments said hey
05:32listen this is an open investigation we can't divulge information to anyone however if you have
05:37something that's compelling that may lead us in a certain direction that could help close this
05:40we're all ears as they should be so i think as far as openness nobody ever obstructed our ability to
05:46investigate in any of the cases and that's all you can ask for and you know i had several friends
05:50that uh that i've known through the years Honolulu police department former detectives they were
05:56fantastic and they opened up as much as they could i felt like you know we got the aloha spirit
06:03as we
06:03were doing our investigation there they wanted answers and it's not just the families of the victims
06:09that suffer with this being unresolved and not having the questions answered but it's as you'll see
06:16the detectives themselves carry this burden of wanting to be able to share this information
06:21and you worked with peter carlisle that's his name correct right peter carlisle and you and him come
06:27up with a conclusion of who you believe to have done it who has also passed away well yeah we
06:33didn't even
06:34come up to that conclusion collectively we wanted the answers to certain hard questions and and i'll be
06:38honest going into it i had spoken to chris off camera and said this guy was a politician he was
06:43the mayor
06:43of honolulu for a while he's going to be polished he's going to give us the politically correct
06:47answer he's not going to say anything and then we asked the big question do you think this individual
06:51did it and he looked us right in the face and said yes and you could see the emotion and
06:56and he felt
06:57from that knowing that he wasn't able to to really put the nail in the coffin so to speak on
07:01this case
07:01but i was so impressed with his candor and the with his willingness to go on camera and say what
07:06he
07:06did because i can tell you right now a lot of the families involved with this you know the victim's
07:10families i think they'll really respect that i really really do he didn't pull any punches he
07:15was direct he didn't equivocate it was here's what i think and it was very emotional our uh primary
07:23homicide investigator who pursued this initially had the original task force similarly fantastic
07:30human being but he had been carrying the weight of this for all these years yeah um in terms of
07:36re-examining these cases how troubling is it to you that these cases are unsolved and these cases
07:43back then they weren't i guess investigated the same way you guys are looking into it for the honolulu
07:48case i think derek you said i don't think this case will ever be classified as cool uh solved well
07:55well the reason i would say that is because in this situation our our primary person of interest is
08:00deceased so the bottom line is this you can't consider a case closed because there's never going
08:06to be a conviction but as far as it being solved with with the conclusion of the show and the
08:10chance
08:11that we gave detective louis souza to speak to one of the victim's brothers and actually tell him
08:15right out who did it why he thought he did it i could tell from the reaction we wanted to
08:19give him
08:19that respect and let him do it because he'd been wanting to do it for years and you could tell
08:23by uh
08:23regina sakamoto's brother's reaction that was what he's been waiting for all this time so and i said to
08:29him hey listen this case may never be classified as closed but in our opinion it's solved and we
08:34wanted him to have his you know his day and his opportunity to do that this is a man that
08:39worked
08:39very hard louis souza yeah to get answers um there's a misunderstanding sometimes that law
08:48enforcement isn't motivated to resolve these cases and while in some cases that that may be
08:54i haven't seen it yet in any of ours these these professionals want these cases solved and sometimes
09:01there's an impasse because of technology a lot of times it's because people aren't coming forward maybe
09:07at the time they didn't think their information was important um and you know going in and you know
09:13getting a fresh perspective talking to people anew re-examining crime scenes and data fresh that ends up
09:19you know kind of uncovering things that need to be uncovered obviously the michelle norris case
09:24was personal to you it became personal for you right how do you separate that well when we say
09:29personal when i say personal i mean that i'm allowing myself to feel and empathize with the experience
09:38you know of the losses that these people julie nate billy the community have experienced and i don't
09:46think that that should necessarily cloud your objectivity in fact it should enhance your
09:51objectivity because what you're doing is saying i am now even more motivated apart from this being
09:58some anonymous case number in a file someplace this is a human being um who meant something to all these
10:06people who should not be forgotten and we owe it to the community and especially to this family to get
10:12answers so to make it personal means i'm not going to distance myself from my responsibility to do the
10:19best job that i can and i'm not interested in getting it wrong right you guys don't have tunnel
10:24vision like you don't go into it no i want the truth i want the truth when it comes to
10:29trying to
10:29decipher fact from fiction you're not you're not swayed by your emotions but what we're saying is
10:34you're raising the level of expectation so if this were someone i cared about if it involved me
10:38what type of investigation would i want these detectives to conduct how far would i want them
10:44to go am i all in yeah am i all in and that's when you put that level of expectation
10:48on yourself
10:49you do and when you put that level of expectation as if it was my daughter or my son or
10:53my wife
10:54what would i do what lengths would i go to within the confines of the law you go all the
10:59way and that's
10:59what we try to do for these families now in terms of uh the season finale the michelle o'keefe
11:05case
11:05can you talk about that and how it was first presented to you and you know it's funny because
11:09the show is called breaking homicide right but you also have to remember that there there are cases
11:14where people are wrongfully convicted of of a crime that they didn't commit and in this situation you
11:19have a you have an individual who did 11 years in prison and was ultimately found factually innocent
11:25so what we always look at it as and all investigators should look at it this way is i'd rather
11:29see a hundred
11:30guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail for something he didn't do so there's two stories
11:35here there's two real great stories about someone who there's two victims here you have an individual
11:40who did 11 years in prison for something he didn't do and you have someone who is still walking the
11:45streets today who committed a heinous act and we're trying to bring light to both situations because
11:49there are still a lot of people out there who believe this individual was found factually innocent
11:53is guilty so we look into that as as well as the other avenues as as far as who may
11:59have possibly done
12:00it michelle o'keefe story has so many important aspects to it not the least of which is making
12:06sure you get it right and that there's enough integrity within the system to admit when it's
12:12made a mistake and now you have a problem of who did it and that's what we investigate and delve
12:17into
12:18what other cases out there would you want to re-examine something that you've oh my gosh come across
12:23over the years that you've said we've had so many different cases that have been presented to us
12:28by individuals across our country there are thousands of unsolved cases and part of what we
12:33want to accomplish in this series in our efforts is to inspire those whose cases we may not take
12:39to not give up and still have hope i've got a couple in mind there's one in ohio that i'm
12:44very much uh into as is derek can you talk about it um no i don't want to yeah because
12:50we want to
12:50solve it we want to solve it and then there's one here in los angeles that i'm actually very interested
12:54in in which a boy's body was found in a chimney many years ago um after he'd been murdered and
13:00i'm
13:00very interested in that case as well but like he said he nailed it you know the the main focus
13:05here
13:05is to know we're going to take the cases as far as we can we also want you the viewers
13:10to know that
13:10society today allows for you to have a voice and as far as we're going to take it you can
13:14take it even
13:15further you have a voice if you see something say something and if you feel that there's an
13:19injustice here or someone may you know be looked should be looked into further use that voice
13:23there are movements happening every day for people that really stand behind certain causes
13:27let's get together and do that let's hold the judicial system accountable and also understand
13:32that if you have something that you've been personally affected by no matter how many years
13:35has passed there's always a chance that it could be solved and people like us are out there
13:39it's not just me and him and and you never know we may be coming or calling you next now
13:44are
13:44there any updates you can provide on some of these cases that you can share so every case that we
13:48work
13:48we can complete a letter we turn it over to the police department in some cases we show them the
13:52footage prior to it and at that point it goes from being our investigation to their investigation because
13:58it's a partnership it's a collaboration and we want to solve these cases and those are the
14:02individuals who have the opportunity to do that so we are not going to divulge what we know now
14:06for the integrity of the case but if there's an update if or when there's an arrest in any of
14:10these cases
14:11we will 100 percent make sure that everyone knows uh the status of that investigation breaking homicide
14:17final theory on id go is the place to get those kinds of updates but i'll tell you this we've
14:23done
14:23a number of these interviews and after one of the first interviews we did derek gets a text from somebody
14:29watching that show that had additional information about our first case and that has been turned over
14:35so what i'll tell you is while we take these investigations forward that momentum has been
14:41propped up and accelerated by other people out there watching this that have actually done the right
14:47thing and called out before we go is there anything you want to say no i just i hope people
14:51check out
14:51the show and again if you have something that could help the case go further use your voice let's make
14:56it a movement let's get these cases solved for these individuals that's what it's about a lot of shows you
15:00watch out there there's already an ending you're just watching the show and there's a conclusion
15:04that's not always going to be the case in this it's up to you to get there and we're going
15:07to help as
15:07much as we can but let's give these families the justice they deserve you are part of this and it's
15:13partnerships that solve cases today thanks for watching thanks for watching thank you guys thank you
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