It’s possible the case of Peter Kema Jr., aka “Peter Boy,” the 6-year-old Big Island boy whose 1997 disappearance set off a media firestorm, will go to a grand jury for an indictment in 2015.
“That’s my hope,” Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth said Thursday. “We have been actively investigating the case. The police are actively investigating it and we’re still following leads. We haven’t made a charging decision yet, but we expect that we should have something within a reasonable time.
“There is some new information, (but) I cannot tell you what that stuff is. In this case, there’s a lot of information. … Once we have our ducks in a row, we’ll make a decision.”
Peter Boy’s father, Peter Kema Sr., said he took the child to Oahu and gave him to an “Aunty Rose Makuakane” as a hanai, or informal Hawaiian adoption. Neither authorities nor the public believed the story and there were no plane tickets to corroborate his account.
Peter Kema Jr. became the statewide poster child for missing and abused children, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, bumper stickers with the boy’s face were ubiquitous, proclaiming, “Where’s Peter Boy?”
Police and prosecutors are investigating the case as a murder.
Asked if Peter Boy has been declared legally dead, Roth replied, “This case is under investigation and I cannot (give) an answer right now. … I’ll tell you this. I do believe he’s dead.”
Roth said the new information authorities have is the product of a new round of interviews by prosecutors and police.
“One of the things I said when I was running for office is … that we are going to start looking at … these older cases with a new set of eyes. And we have,” he said.
Peter Kema Sr. and his wife, Jaylin Kema, Peter Boy’s mother, have not been charged with a crime connected to Peter Boy’s disappearance, but they were provided with a court-appointed attorney, a rare occurrence when no charges have been filed.
Lillian Koller, then state Health and Human Services director, released thousands of pages of Child Protective Service files documenting years of abuse suffered by Peter Boy and his siblings at the hands of Peter Kema Sr.
Peter Boy was taken from the Kemas by CPS but was returned to the couple prior to his disappearance.
No body was found, but a younger sister of Peter Boy’s told a psychologist in 1998 she saw the boy “dead in her father’s car trunk.”
The girl, then 5, also said she saw “Peter Boy in a box ‘dead’ in her parents’ closet and they took the box to Honolulu.”
Peter Boy’s older half-sister, Chauntelle Acol, still clings to hope her brother is alive.
“Maybe it’s delusional,” she said Thursday. “… I want closure for the family; I don’t want closure for myself. Obviously, if they’re gonna push it forward for murder, they have evidence to back it up. For me, I would rather have him come home safe and sound, or at least alive, instead of the opposite.”
Asked if she wants justice if Peter Boy is dead, Acol said, “I would agree with that.”
“I guess some answers are better than no answers,” she said. “Maybe it’s denial. I don’t know. I’m kind of heartbroken about it.”
Acol, the daughter of Jaylin Kema and the stepdaughter of Peter Kema Sr., said she thinks her mother knows the truth.
“They will ride and die together,” she said of the couple. “If she didn’t have anything to do with Peter Boy’s disappearance, murder, whatever the case may be, I think she would easily throw him (Peter Sr.) under the bus. … Peter physically and emotionally harmed us and mentally harmed us, too. But, as a parent, how would you, if you’re innocent, not want to protect your children and be there for your children?”
Acol, the mother of a son, almost 4, then paused and added, “There’s no length I would not go to protect my own kid.”