either. how d he do? he didn t do that good. he didn t pass. that was interesting. both suspects failed the polygraph. so now ponce looked at the evidence against darren, who gave police two entirely different accounts of the morning of the murder. first he said sandra came by to get the kids. then a minute later said she didn t. now, remember, darren and sandra were going through a divorce and a heated child custody battle. so darren apparently thought it would be a good idea to take note of run-ins with sandra, like the time she was late in picking up the boys, hoping it would one day help him in court. you know, going through the calendar what i found really interesting is that it s pretty detailed from january 1st, every day, all the way up until the 24th is the very last entry. and on the 25th you ve got nothing.
she was just a darling girl, you know, with two darling children. crystal hall was a waitress at the beach house and saw firsthand sandra s transformation from quiet island girl to young working woman. she wore her hair back in a ponytail, and she was very prim and proper and very, you know, subdued. as soon as she got away from darren she was like cut her hair in a bob and it was really cute and stylish all of a sudden. sandra started going out with friends, and as is pretty obvious in this concert video, she was enjoying her new life. but before too long, sandra started getting friendly with one of the chefs, a recent transplant from oahu named ryan shinjo. he wined and dined her and took really good care of her. he was really nice to her. they were always doing all kinds of fabulous things. going on honolulu shopping trips, for instance, where ryan would lavish expensive gifts on sandra, like louis vuitton
retirement and took the job as head of the kauai police department after the sudden death of his 26-year-old son erickson. i feel in a way that i m working through him, that he motivates me. i believe that things happen for a reason. and in fact, i told larry this. i told him, there s a reason why we met. i don t know what the reasons are, but i m here for you. so after meeting with larry, chief perry sent sandra s file to a couple of friends in honolulu, investigators with the state attorney general s cold case unit. i asked them to see if they can find anything else that we may have missed. and they did indeed find something, using what was breakthrough science for that time, early 2009. cold case investigators extracted touch dna from sandra s shirt and bra. chief perry called larry with the news. and he said, they ve got something. they rescanned her
so you think that darren came up, followed her, had the confrontation there, killed her with a ligature, choked her to death. then what did he do? you know, i think after the incident happened over here he went back and just took off and headed back home. and nobody saw him? it was still dark. ponce also found this e-mail sandra sent her lawyer just three weeks before her murder. darren started asking me about my boyfriend, as he calls him, ryan. he got really upset and started swearing at me. he started shaking me, telling me to tell him the truth and don t ever call him again. ponce worked the investigation for close to a year. but as he weighed and reweighed the evidence, he always came back to darren, who lacked an alibi, who called in sick to work, who gave conflicting accounts about the morning of the murder, who left blank the diary entry for
and her home life? old-fashioned. traditional. traditional family, you know. catholic. play-by-the-rules type of people. yeah? yeah. discipline, a very important thing to larry, he the 20-year air force veteran. i was trying to toughen her up, if you want to put it in that expression, to know what the real world was like. that was why larry insisted sandra leave kauai to go to college. she ended up in honolulu. but for a small island girl it felt as big and lonely as new york city. she missed kauai, her family, and would come home as often as she could. that s when she got involved with darren. and darren was here? darren was here. darren galas, a little