HAWAII (KHON2) -- The Hawaii County prosecutors said they have not reviewed any of the final police reports, documents, or evidence related to the latest developments in the Dana Ireland case. Meanwhile the Hawaii Innocence Project said the Hawaii County Police Department dropped the ball.
Officials confirm DNA evidence identified 57-year-old Albert Lauro Jr. as 'Unknown Male #1' in the Dana Ireland murder investigation. The revelation solving a decades old mystery in Ireland's case. Hawaii County Police Chief Ben Moszkowicz said the evidence is irrefutable, cracking the cold case wide open.
So Moszkowicz said investigators brought Lauro in.
"When we invited him in for a consensual encounter, we sat down, we talked to him for about an hour," Moszkowicz added "And at the end of about the hour, we collected a court ordered DNA sample, to compare against the exemplars that we already had."
Moszkowicz said they told Lauro why he was there and recorded the conversation, but would not disclose what was said.
"He did give us some information about what he did or did not remember and we're trying to fact check that to determine if we can gain any new investigative leads from the investigation that was discussed," he said.
At that time Moszkowicz said they let him go because they did not have probably cause to arrest him.
That's where the Hawaii Innocence Project said county police dropped the ball.
Ken Lawson, co-director for the Hawaii Innocence Project, said police should have charged Lauro with second degree murder because that is what Sean Schweitzer, one of the men initially charged with Ireland's murder, was initially indicted for in 1997.
"They're claiming that because it was evidence of sexual assault and sexual assault statute limitation ran right, they couldn't charge him because they needed more evidence that he committed the murder, which is totally, totally ridiculous," Lawson said. "Count, one of the prosecutor's indictment was for second degree murder, because they said that Sean, when he sees her injured like that, he had a duty to get her help, and because he didn't help her and let her die like that, and he had a duty to do that, he can be charged a second degree murder."
Moszkowicz said if they did arrest Lauro without probable cause, it could hurt the case moving forward.
"We face the very real possibility that if we had arrested Mr. Lauro without probable cause that anything we gathered during that arrest could be excluded," he explained.
Lawson said they are asking the FBI to investigate the way the case was handled and they also want to see all the evidence collected by Hawaii PD when they brought Lauro in, before he committed suicide.
Moszkowicz said Lauro's body was found at his home and that he had only been arrested once before in 1980 for shoplifting.