A man identified as a new suspect in the murder and sexual assault of a Virginia woman while visiting Hawaii more than three decades ago recently committed suicide after police conducted DNA testing, authorities said.
Hawaii police said Monday that DNA taken from Dana Ireland’s body matched that of Albert Lauro Jr., 57, of Hawaiian Paradise Park on Hawaii Island. Police Chief Ben Moskowitz said Lauro committed suicide and was found dead in his home.
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Authorities had zeroed in on Lauro in recent months, taking a DNA sample from a discarded fork after seeing him eat lunch, and after police visited his home and matched the sample to a swab taken from him, he committed suicide last week.
Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Lauro’s relatives were unsuccessful.
The DNA evidence marks a major breakthrough in the high-profile case that saw Albert “Ian” Schweitzer released last year after serving more than 20 years in prison for murder based on new evidence. Ireland’s body was found on the Big Island of Hawaii on Christmas Eve 1991.
A court official removes the handcuffs from Albert “Ian” Schweitzer after a judge ruled to immediately release him after serving more than 20 years of his sentence on Jan. 24, 2023, in Hilo, Hawaii. (Marco Garcia/Innocence Project via The Associated Press, File)
Schweitzer is one of three men jailed for her murder but has always maintained his innocence, and a judge is scheduled to rule on a motion to formally exonerate him on Tuesday.
Police said the DNA test provided sufficient evidence to charge Lauro with rape, but that the statute of limitations for such a crime expired several years ago. A murder charge in Ireland’s death is still within the statute of limitations, but police said there is insufficient evidence to charge Lauro with murder.
“The presence of Ms. Lauro’s DNA at the crime scene is not, in itself, sufficient evidence to prove that he knowingly or knowingly caused her death,” Moskowitz said during a news conference livestreamed from Hilo.
Moscovici said police hope Lauro’s cellphone will provide some answers and help family and friends who knew him in 1991 and now shed light on what happened.
Schweitzer’s defense team roundly criticized the police, claiming that they deliberately undermined the investigation into Lauro by not taking steps to prevent him from fleeing or committing suicide after police obtained his DNA. They argued that because of Lauro’s death, the truth of what happened to Ireland will never be revealed. They also demanded all communications related to the federal investigation and the DNA study.
“We knew he had a family and a happy life,” Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, who is assisting the Hawaii Innocence Project in the Schweitzer case, said of Lauro. “We know this well in law enforcement, when you find someone’s DNA and you know that person committed a crime, if you don’t put that person in custody, there’s a good chance they’re going to flee, destroy evidence or commit suicide.”
Moscovici said that if police had arrested Lauro without probable cause, the court would not have accepted the evidence they subsequently collected.
He denied that police had interfered in the case.
“That is totally false and 100 percent untrue,” he said, adding that police would follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Mayor Mitch Ross, who was the island’s top prosecutor when Schweitzer’s lawyers and prosecutors reached a “conviction integrity agreement” to reinvestigate the case, said Monday he supported police, noting that test results from swabs taken by police were not available until after Lauro’s death.
Lauro was not under police surveillance when Ross was the prosecutor, and “when I investigated the case, I never saw this person’s name on the police report.”
Moskovitz said Lauro had been arrested once for shoplifting in 1987, when he was about 20 years old.
The search for Ireland’s murder has gained new momentum with the release of Schweitzer, who was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to 130 years in prison, in January 2023. Lawyers for the Innocence Project, who handled his case, argued that his DNA did not match that of a T-shirt found near Ireland, which was not Ireland’s but was stained with her blood and contained the DNA of an unidentified man.
Although Schweitzer has been released, his defense team and prosecutors continue to argue over whether he is truly innocent and whether he deserves compensation for the years he spent in prison.
Schweitzer’s Innocence Project lawyers pursued DNA matches with the help of Steven Kramer, a former FBI lawyer and federal prosecutor who led the genetic genealogy team that solved the Golden State Killer case in 2018. Kramer found matches based on genes, ancestry, age and address history.
Lauro lived within two miles (3.2 kilometers) of where Ireland’s body was found along a remote fishing trail on Hawaii Island, according to court documents filed Sunday by the Innocence Project. Lauro was in his mid-20s at the time and owned or had access to a pickup truck that likely left the tire tracks found at the scene, the documents said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project checked his Facebook page and found he remains an avid angler and would be familiar with the trail where Ireland was found.
On Monday, the lawyers called for a federal investigation into why police did not arrest Lauro, saying they had ample probable cause to do so. In their filing, they ask for all correspondence from police and prosecutors regarding the decision not to seek an arrest warrant after DNA taken from Lauro’s fork was tested. They also want to know why police did not arrest Lauro before and after they took the DNA sample.
A 2023 petition filed seeking the release of Schweitzer, the last of three Native Hawaiians remaining jailed for the murder, outlines the events that have become one of Hawaii’s most notorious.
Ireland, 23, a visitor from Virginia, was found barely alive in brush along a fishing trail in the island’s remote Puna area. She had been sexually assaulted and physically assaulted, and later died at Hilo Medical Center. Her wrecked bicycle was found several miles away, apparently having been hit by a vehicle.
The murder remained unsolved for years.
A man named Frank Paulin Jr., who claimed to have witnessed the attack, told police that Schweitzer and his brother, Shawn Schweitzer, had attacked and killed Ireland, but he was questioned at least seven times and gave contradictory accounts each time, which ultimately led to him incriminating himself and leading prosecutors to indict Paulin and the Schweitzer brothers.
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Pauline and Ian Schweitzer were convicted in 2000. Shawn Schweitzer accepted a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping and receive about a year in prison and five years probation after a jury convicted Pauline and his brother in 2000. Pauline died in prison.
The Schweitzer brothers are “pleased that this individual has finally been caught,” said Kenneth Lawson, co-executive director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. “They are disappointed with the way this case has turned out.”
