Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Hawaii police search for man wanted in connection with 3 killings in 2 days

Transcript

Hawaii police search for man wanted in connection with 3 killings in 2 days · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: We tend to think that the further we get from
• 0:03
  society like the safer we are from its.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Dangers, right, the whole cabin in the woods fantasy exactly.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We have this collective fantasy that if we can just
• 0:10
  you know, put enough physical distance between ourselves and the concrete,
• 0:14
  the crowds, the endless noise of modern life, we can
• 0:17
  build a sanctuary.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: It's a very common dream, honestly, especially lately.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but in the spring of twenty twenty six, one
• 0:25
  community in Hawaii learned a pretty devastating lesson about the
• 0:29
  true cost of that isolation.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: They really did. They learned that when you successfully leave
• 0:35
  society's rules behind, you also leave behind its protections, which is.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Such a profound paradox, and it's something that sits right
• 0:42
  at the center of the events we are going to
• 0:44
  look at today.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It really is the core of this whole deep dive,
• 0:47
  because the very elements that make a place feel like
• 0:50
  a secluded paradise, right, like the privacy, the unpaid roads,
• 0:54
  the distance from municipal oversight. Yeah, those are the exact
• 0:58
  same elements that can allow crisis to escalate with terrifying
• 1:01
  speed and completely undetected by the outside world.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Right. So we are going to the Puna district on
• 1:07
  the Big Island late May twenty twenty six, and I
• 1:10
  want you, the listener to really picture this. The postcard
• 1:14
  version of Hawaii you might be imagining right now, like
• 1:16
  the manicured resorts, the golf courses, the pool side service.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Completely erase that, h Yeah.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Erase it entirely. Puna is It's a rugged, deeply isolated
• 1:28
  volcanic rainforest.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: It has an energy that feels honestly, far more like
• 1:33
  a frontier town than a luxury vacation spot.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Totally. And over the course of just forty eight hours,
• 1:39
  that dense rainforest became the backdrop for a wave of
• 1:42
  violence that completely tore through an off grid community.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We've been going through a huge stack of sources detailing this.
• 1:48
  It's a massive island wide manhunt that pulled in federal
• 1:51
  and state.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Agency, which is crazy for an area like this exactly.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And effectively lockdown a region that is normally defined by
• 1:57
  its absolute freedom. You have three elderly men, all independent
• 2:01
  rural residents, living peacefully on their own properties, and they
• 2:04
  were found dead.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And the suspect, right, he was a thirty six year
• 2:07
  old man named Jacob Daniel Baker. Authorities described him as
• 2:11
  armed and extremely dangerous.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Right, and he was a man who had been openly
• 2:16
  visibly spiraling into a severe mental health crisis.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: So our mission today for this deep dive is to
• 2:22
  really dig into the anatomy of this tragedy. We are
• 2:25
  going to map out the timeline of this triple homicide,
• 2:28
  dissect the suspect's background, and critically examine the systemic failures
• 2:33
  that preceded the violence.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Because there were so many missed signals.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So many We want to help you understand the profound
• 2:39
  vulnerabilities of living off the grid because when you look closely,
• 2:42
  this is not just a true crime narrative, it is
• 2:44
  really an indictment of a system.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what we are examining here is essentially a worst
• 2:49
  case scenario. It's where a rural isolation, severe untreated mental illness,
• 2:54
  and just massive bureaucratic blind spots in the justice system
• 2:58
  all intersect at the exact same time.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: It's the perfect storm.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It is. It's a tragic case study in what happens
• 3:04
  when the sidle safety net is stretched so thin over
• 3:06
  such a vast geographical area that essentially just it just snaps.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Well, to understand how a community could be so vulnerable,
• 3:13
  we have to talk about the physical reality of Puna.
• 3:17
  The landscape isn't just the setting here, right. It fundamentally
• 3:20
  dictates how people live and unfortunately, how they die.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Geographically, Puna sits on the eastern side of the Big
• 3:27
  Island and it is defined by recent volcanic activity from Kilauea.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Which means the soil is incredibly fertile, very.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Fertile, but the terrain is rugged. I mean you have
• 3:37
  thick triple canopy rainforests that can completely swallow a house
• 3:41
  from view. You have this dramatic coastline with black sand beaches.
• 3:45
  And in the middle of all this you have towns
• 3:47
  like Pahoa.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And Pohoa is such a fascinating place. It serves as
• 3:51
  this cultural hub for the district. It has like wooden storefronts,
• 3:55
  elevated boardwalks, and a very distinct bohemian almost countercultural vibe.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the demographic makeup of Puna is deeply layered. You
• 4:02
  have long time, multi generational local Hawaiian families, but right
• 4:06
  alongside them, you have a massive influx of mainland transplants.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Right people drowne to permaculture.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly permaculture, which is basically the practice of designing agricultural
• 4:17
  ecosystems that are entirely self sufficient and sustainable.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So you have spiritual seekers, people looking for an alternative lifestyle,
• 4:24
  and individuals who just want to be left completely alone.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Which is fine, but I want to pause on that
• 4:29
  demographic mix because it creates a very specific social contract.
• 4:34
  What do you mean, Well, the people moving there are
• 4:36
  actively opting out of traditional infrastructure. They are embracing a
• 4:41
  life where the ultimate luxury is isolation. Right, But when
• 4:44
  you look at the logistics of that isolation, it is staggering.
• 4:48
  We are talking about a district that covers roughly the
• 4:50
  same square mileage as the entire island of o Wahoo.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, o Wahu is.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Huge, exactly. A Waho has close to a million people
• 4:58
  and a massive, highly funded metropolitan police department. Puna has
• 5:03
  the same land mass, but it is chronically understaffed by
• 5:07
  the Hawaii Police Department.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So the policing logistics out there must be an absolute nightmare.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Oh it is. You have a handful of officers responsible
• 5:14
  for hundreds of square miles of deeply challenging terrain. We
• 5:18
  aren't talking about cruising down paved, illuminated avenues.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: No, of course not.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: We're talking about navigating miles of unpaved, deeply rutted dirt
• 5:27
  roads that just wind endlessly through dense jungle.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: So a routine response like to a noise complaint or
• 5:33
  a domestic dispute isn't a five minute.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Drive, not at all. It can be a forty five
• 5:38
  minute expedition justifying the property line.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And the properties themselves are literally designed to be hidden.
• 5:44
  People build their homes at the end of these long driveways,
• 5:47
  tucked behind acres of vegetation, right.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And there is no municipal water grid out there. Residents
• 5:52
  rely almost entirely on catchment tanks to collect rain water
• 5:55
  for their daily survival.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: It is an environment where self reliance isn't a hobby,
• 6:00
  it is a daily requirement. You also have a lot
• 6:02
  of legal gray areas out there, right.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, historically around cannabis cultivation, which fosters a general wariness
• 6:08
  of law enforcement. Anyway, the prevailing attitude is often we
• 6:12
  take care.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Of our own, which brings us back to that central
• 6:15
  paradox we talked about that extreme isolation breeds a genuinely
• 6:20
  beautiful culture of mutual reliance. It is the alow haw
• 6:24
  spirit in action.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It really is. If a storm knocks a tree across
• 6:28
  your quarter mile driveway, you don't call the city.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: No, you call your neighbor who has a chainsaw and
• 6:34
  a tractor.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You rely on the people immediately around you because
• 6:38
  they are the only ones who can actually get to
• 6:39
  you in time. Yeah, but that same isolation creates an
• 6:44
  incredible vulnerability, right.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Because if the person holding the chainsaw decides they want
• 6:48
  to hurt you instead of help you, nobody's coming to
• 6:50
  save you. So let me ask you this. If a
• 6:53
  community defines itself for being disconnected from the grid, how
• 6:56
  does that shift their baseline of public safety?
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Shifts the burden of safety entirely onto the individual and
• 7:02
  the immediate neighborhood. The baseline expectation moves from the police
• 7:06
  are patrolling and will deter crime to we are on
• 7:09
  our own until the aftermath.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: It is when homes are physically masked by the rainforest,
• 7:15
  a crisis can unfold, escalate, and conclude before anyone a
• 7:20
  mile down the road even knows something is wrong. The
• 7:23
  environment effectively muffles the crime.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly what happened during the forty eight hours.
• 7:28
  We were looking at the geographical reality of Puna directly
• 7:32
  dictated how these killings were discovered.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: It really acted as a smoke screen.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it turned what initially looked like a tragic, isolated
• 7:39
  accident into a rolling, active nightmare. Let's look at how
• 7:43
  this timeline escalates.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: The timeline is the clearest demonstration of how the landscape
• 7:48
  hindered the initial investigation. Let's walk through it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we start on Monday, May twenty fifth. It
• 7:53
  is roughly eight point zero zero pm. Police officers respond
• 7:57
  to a call at a property off Railroad Avenue in Pahoa,
• 8:00
  and they find a sixty nine year old man named
• 8:02
  Robert Shine, who went by Bob dead on his property. Specifically,
• 8:06
  he has found partially submerged in a cement catchment tank.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Now we just mentioned these tanks. They are massive structures,
• 8:12
  often above ground cement or corrugated metal cylinders lined with heavy.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Plastic, designed to catch rain off the roof.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Right, and this is where the environment provides a plausible,
• 8:22
  non criminal explanation.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: When officers arrive, it is night, they are off the grid.
• 8:29
  They find an older man living a somewhat rugged, labor
• 8:33
  intensive lifestyle dead in a water storage tank, right.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So they're thinking accident because.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Of the water and the lack of obvious immediate gunshot
• 8:42
  wounds or massive external trauma that would be visible in
• 8:45
  the dark. The initial assessment leans heavily toward a terrible.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Accident, like a medical incident. They think maybe he had
• 8:51
  a heart attack while checking his water levels and fell in.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: It is a completely logical assumption based on the hazards
• 8:57
  of off grid living. Older individual performing manual labor on
• 9:01
  rugged properties have accidents all the time.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until the medical examiner conducted an autopsy the
• 9:07
  following day, Tuesday, that the reality was revealed. Bob Shine
• 9:12
  did not have a heart attack. He was murdered.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, So think about what that means for the community.
• 9:17
  For roughly sixteen to eighteen hours after the first murder,
• 9:20
  there is an active killer moving through the Puna district
• 9:23
  and absolutely no one knows it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: It creates a terrifying operational vacuum.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Because the police don't know they have a homicide. The
• 9:30
  neighbors think it was a tragic accident. The alarm hasn't
• 9:33
  been pulled. The killer has a massive head start exactly.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: The suspect is moving freely without any elevated police presence
• 9:39
  or community vigilance to deter him.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Then we hit Tuesday, May twenty sixth. It is just
• 9:44
  after twelve thirty pm. Police discover a second victim.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: This is at a home off Papaya Farms Road, which
• 9:51
  the sources note is roughly four to five hundred yards
• 9:54
  away from Bob Shein's residence.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And this victim is seventy nine year old shit Imorse.
• 9:58
  And this time the illusion of an accident completely vanishes completely.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: The sources detail that Moore suffered severe blunt force trauma.
• 10:06
  A friend described the scene by saying he was hacked
• 10:08
  up in the attack. Oh god, yeah, the violence was
• 10:11
  overt and incredibly brutal.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: The context shifts violently for law enforcement in that exact moment.
• 10:17
  You now have two elderly men living in the same
• 10:20
  immediate vicinity, both dead within a twenty four hour window.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Right, The hypothesis of a medical accident is discarded instantly.
• 10:26
  They realize they are dealing with a localized, extremely violent threat.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: But the threat isn't just localized, right, because that same
• 10:34
  Tuesday evening, around nine point five to eight pm, officers
• 10:38
  are conducting a welfare check on a third man.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is sixty nine year old John Cars. He
• 10:43
  lives on Calipana Capo Beach Road.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And this detail is critical. His property is about nineteen
• 10:48
  miles away from where the other two victims were found.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Nineteen miles in Puna is a long difficult drive.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Right, and officers discover him dead with apparent injury is
• 10:58
  consistent with an attack. We now have three bodies in
• 11:01
  two days, and the.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Most striking detail the sources provide is this no firearms
• 11:06
  were used in any of these killings.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Which is wild. By Wednesday, police Chief Read Mahna publicly
• 11:11
  links the deaths and names Jacob Daniel Baker as the suspect.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: The psychological impact of that progression on the community is
• 11:17
  just hard to overstate.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in the shoes of a resident living out
• 11:21
  on one of those dirt roads. You rely on your
• 11:24
  catchment tank for water. On Monday night, you hear police
• 11:27
  sirens down the road and the rumor mill says old
• 11:30
  Bob had a heart attack.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: You feel sad, but you still feel safe exactly.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: But by Tuesday afternoon you hear the horrific details about
• 11:38
  Shitta Morse and a cold sweat starts to form. By
• 11:41
  Tuesday night, you find out a third neighbor was killed
• 11:44
  nineteen miles away.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Suddenly you realize there is a highly mobile, incredibly violent
• 11:49
  threat actively navigating the jungle and you have no idea
• 11:53
  where he is going next.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate nightmare scenario, and.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: From an investigative standpoint, the police are looking at it
• 12:00
  very specific and troubling profile based on the crime scenes.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I really want to dig into that profiling aspect because
• 12:06
  you have two victims found just yards apart and a
• 12:09
  third found nineteen miles away, and as we noted, no
• 12:12
  guns were used. How does a police department look at
• 12:15
  that specific spatial relationship, that specific hands on method of
• 12:19
  killing and begin to understand the psychology of the person
• 12:22
  they are hunting.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Well, let's break down the mechanics of the violence first.
• 12:26
  When you are dealing with close quarters non firearm killings,
• 12:29
  specifically blunt force trauma or hacking, you are looking at
• 12:33
  deeply personal, highly physical, and wildly erratic behavior.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: It takes a lot of physical exertion to kill a
• 12:41
  human being with your hands or a blunt object.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: An immense amount. It is intimate, it is exhausting, and
• 12:46
  it is incredibly messy. To do it three times in
• 12:49
  rapid succession requires a terrifying phrenetic energy. This immediately tells
• 12:54
  law enforcement that they're not looking for a calculated hit man.
• 12:57
  They are not looking for someone executing them the thingdodal
• 13:00
  premeditated plan.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Right, They're hunting a highly volatile individual operating in a
• 13:05
  state of extreme sustained physical rage or profound psychosis.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is not a sniper taking a shot and disappearing.
• 13:12
  It is someone who is completely unraveling.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Now, factor in the geography. Killing two people in close
• 13:18
  proximity suggests an immediate localized explosion of violence. But then
• 13:23
  to travel nineteen miles in Puna to kill a third
• 13:25
  person in the exact same manner.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: That's a huge distance to cover while maintaining that level
• 13:30
  of rage.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That indicates a mobile threat. Who is maintaining that
• 13:34
  intense hands on level of violence over a significant distance
• 13:39
  in duration. It signals a complete psychological break from reality.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the core question who was Jacob
• 13:46
  Daniel Baker? Because a psychological break of this magnitude rarely
• 13:50
  happens in a complete vacuum. He didn't just drop out
• 13:53
  of the sky and too puna.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. He was a known entity within
• 13:57
  the local alternative communities. Baker was thirty six years old.
• 14:01
  Authorities described him as five foot nine, one hundred and
• 14:04
  ninety pounds, with a fresh tattoo right under.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: His left eye, and he had a history in the area.
• 14:10
  The sources indicate he had lived in a cabin at
• 14:12
  a place called Josanna's Organic Garden or a similar farm
• 14:15
  property for about a year and a half.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Right he was embedded in that off grid barter economy lifestyle.
• 14:21
  He wasn't paying standard rent. He was exchanging labor for
• 14:24
  his housing, harvesting coconuts, and doing odd jobs around the property.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: And if you trace his trajectory through the accounts of
• 14:30
  his neighbors, you see a steep, tragic decline.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, initially he was perceived as a hustling entrepreneur trying
• 14:38
  to build a life and support his family. There are
• 14:40
  references to a former girlfriend and a child, but.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Something fractured fundamentally. Neighbors reported that he left the farm
• 14:47
  property for about two months and when he returned around
• 14:50
  May twenty second, just days before the killings, he was
• 14:53
  a completely different person.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: He was descending into a severe, visible mental health crisis.
• 15:00
  The sources specifically mentioned he was exhibiting signs of possible schizophrenia.
• 15:05
  Really yeah, he was displaying intense paranoia, unprovoked anger, and
• 15:09
  he was making active, violent threats against the people around him.
• 15:13
  He was spiraling, and he was doing it in plain sight.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And this is where the timeline moves from a tragic
• 15:17
  story of mental illness into a story of profound systemic
• 15:20
  failure because.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: The people around him saw the danger right.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: They recognized the escalation, and they actively tried to engage
• 15:27
  the legal system to stop him before it boiled over.
• 15:30
  They pulled the fire alarm.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: They really did. Just days before the first murder, on Friday,
• 15:35
  May twenty third, two women associated with the farm property
• 15:39
  filed applications for temporary restraining orders tros against him.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: They didn't just call and complain, They went through the
• 15:47
  formal legal process to document their terror.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And the details containing those TIRO of applications are haunting
• 15:54
  when you read them retroactively.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: What did they say?
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Well, a woman named Janelle Honor explicitly stated in her
• 16:00
  filing that Baker had threatened her life. She documented that
• 16:04
  he had also threatened a disabled man and several other
• 16:06
  individuals on.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: The property that is terrifying.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: She outlined a deep fear of him entering buildings, stealing items,
• 16:13
  or attempting to squad on the land.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And a second woman in Jelly Ramaro Hansen, filed an
• 16:17
  entirely separate petition right yes.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: She stated in her report that women were literally fleeing
• 16:22
  the farm because of his escalating threats. She urged the
• 16:25
  court to approve the order quickly.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So they were telling this system in writing, this man
• 16:30
  is dangerous and we are not safe.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But here is where the bureaucratic machinery completely jams.
• 16:37
  They filed these petitions on Friday, May twenty third. The
• 16:40
  civil courts then closed for the long Memorial Day weekend.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. The timing is a critical devastating factor.
• 16:49
  The judicial system operates on a standard Monday to Friday schedule.
• 16:53
  It observes federal holidays.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: But severe mental health crises and violence do not adhere
• 16:58
  to a bureaucratic calendar. That three day delay allowed the
• 17:01
  tension on the farm to boil over into catastrophic violence.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: It is infuriating. The calendar effectively aided the killer, and
• 17:08
  it gets worse.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The weekend passes on Tuesday, May twenty sixth, while Bob
• 17:13
  Shine is dead and Shitemors and John Carrs are either
• 17:15
  being attacked or about to be. Judge Michelle Cannanni Laubach
• 17:18
  finally reviews the tro.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Petitions and she denies them, both of them.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Her stated reason, insufficient evidence.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: It is a decision that exposes the massive gulf between
• 17:27
  the rigid architecture of the law and the fluid reality
• 17:30
  of human danger.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I have to stop you there because I struggle to
• 17:33
  understand how a judge looks at two separate women swearing
• 17:36
  under oath that a man is threatening their lives and
• 17:39
  that people are fleeing a property in terror, and concludes
• 17:42
  there is insufficient evidence.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I know it sounds if that is.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: An evidence of immediate harm? What is does he have
• 17:49
  to actually stab someone before the civil court will intervene.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: To understand the judge's decision, not to excuse the outcome,
• 17:56
  but to understand the mechanics of the failure, we have
• 17:59
  to look at the strict legal threshold required in civil court.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain that.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: A judge is operating within the confines of civil law,
• 18:07
  which requires a very specific burden of proof to strip
• 18:11
  someone of their civil liberties or forcibly remove them from
• 18:14
  a location.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: But wait, these were death threats, yes, But.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: In the eyes of a civil court judge looking at
• 18:20
  a piece of paper, hearsay general feelings of profound unease
• 18:23
  or even verbal threats that lack documented physical follow through
• 18:28
  sometimes fail to meet the strict legal standard required to
• 18:31
  issue a mandate. The judge is applying a cold legal
• 18:35
  formula designed to protect due process. They are looking for specific,
• 18:39
  actionable proof of immediate physical danger that meets a statutory definition.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: That feels like a fundamental flaw in the system. The
• 18:48
  people living on that farm aren't operating in a legal formula.
• 18:51
  They are operating in a state of real, visceral panic.
• 18:55
  They are watching a man lose his grip on reality
• 18:58
  in their backyard. The legal standard of insufficient evidence completely
• 19:03
  failed to capture the practical reality of the threat.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It is a devastating bottleneck. But the most fatal flaw
• 19:09
  in this entire sequence, the failure that truly allowed the
• 19:12
  violence to unfold the way it did, was the complete
• 19:15
  lack of communication between the civil courts processing those threats
• 19:19
  and the local police patrolling the district.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: This is the part that genuinely shocks me. The sources
• 19:23
  report that the local police department was completely unaware that
• 19:26
  these civil TRORO applications had even been filed.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: They had no idea.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: It's like air traffic control and the runway crew operating
• 19:33
  on completely different radio frequencies. The tower the civil court
• 19:37
  knows a plane is coming in too fast, it has
• 19:40
  the documents outlining the danger, but the officers on the
• 19:44
  ground are just going about their day, completely blind to
• 19:47
  the threat until the moment of impact.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It is a profound systemic disconnect. If there had been
• 19:53
  a centralized real time pipeline between civil court filings involving
• 19:58
  threats of violence and police dispatch, the entire trajectory of
• 20:01
  those forty eight hours might have changed.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Think about Monday night. If the police who responded to
• 20:06
  Bob Shein's property had been flagged by dispatch that a
• 20:08
  man named Jacob Baker, who lived in the immediate vicinity,
• 20:11
  had documented death threats filed against him just three days.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Prior, they might not have looked at an elderly man
• 20:17
  in a catchment tank and assumed he had a heart attack.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly, they would have arrived with context. They would have
• 20:21
  treated it as a potential crime scene immediately. The manhunt
• 20:24
  would have started sixteen hours earlier.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: The community could have been warned. Instead, the preventative mechanisms
• 20:30
  of the justice system failed at every single.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Level, and when the preventative system fails, the reactive system
• 20:37
  is forced to take over, usually at a much higher
• 20:39
  and more tragic cost.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the reactive lockdown. The denial of
• 20:45
  those tros, followed rapidly by the undeniable discovery of three
• 20:49
  murdered men, forced the entire punic community and a massive
• 20:52
  coalition of law enforcement into a frantic manhunt.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And the scale of this mobilization was unprecedented for the area.
• 21:00
  The Hawaii Police Department through their entire force.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: At this but given the terrain we discussed, an area
• 21:06
  the size of a wahoo covered in dense jungle, they
• 21:09
  couldn't do it alone, right, They.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Pulled in federal resources, the FBI, the United States Marshall Service,
• 21:15
  Homeland Security investigations, state sheriffs, and officers from the Department
• 21:19
  of Land and Natural Resources all descended on Puna.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: The logistics of hunting a single erratic individual in that
• 21:25
  environment are incredibly complex. You have multi agency teams attempting
• 21:29
  to canvass rural neighborhoods where the roads aren't clearly Martin.
• 21:33
  They deployed drones over the rainforest, but the utility of
• 21:36
  a drone is severely limited. When you have a triple
• 21:39
  canopy jungle that blocks the line of sight and masks
• 21:42
  heat signatures. You were essentially searching for a ghost in
• 21:46
  a green maze.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The strategy employed by Chief Mahuna during this chaos was
• 21:51
  very deliberate. He kept the public messaging incredibly tight.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: What did he focus on?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: He has stated number one priority was bringing Jacob Baker
• 21:59
  into safe custody without anyone else, including the suspect, being harmed.
• 22:03
  He wasn't giving inflammatory press conferences.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: That makes sense.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, He was using the media to speak directly to Baker,
• 22:10
  urging him to surrender, and his warning to the public
• 22:12
  was absolute, do not approach this man under any circumstances.
• 22:16
  Lock your doors, call nine to one to one, or
• 22:18
  the tip line.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: That vessaging created an incredibly surreal atmosphere on the ground.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: The sources describe a bizarre split reality. In the town
• 22:27
  center of Pahoa, there was this eerie sense of normalcy.
• 22:30
  People were still walking along the wooden storefronts, trying to
• 22:32
  go about their day.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: But out on the rural roads where the victims were found,
• 22:36
  the community went into total lockdown mode.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Right and out of that lockdown, a very specific grassroots
• 22:43
  response emerged. Residents living along Red Road, a scenic, winding
• 22:47
  coastal road that stretches from Kaimu to Pohoiki, formed their
• 22:51
  own community patrols.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: It is a fascinating sociological reaction to acute trauma and vulnerability.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I really want to focus deeply on this because it
• 23:01
  challenges our basic assumptions about survival. Visualize being in Puna
• 23:06
  during that manhunt. You are miles down a dirt road,
• 23:10
  You are entirely off the grid, you are surrounded by
• 23:13
  thick vegetation, and you know there is a man out
• 23:16
  there who has just beaten three of your neighbors.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: To that, that's a nightmare.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: The police are swarming, but they can't be everywhere. Why
• 23:22
  in that scenario of ultimate terror did the community choose
• 23:25
  to walk out of their homes and form patrols on
• 23:27
  the road. Doesn't that go against every instinct. You have
• 23:31
  to just barricade your door, turn off the lights, and
• 23:33
  hide under the bed until the police catch him.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Honestly, if you are living in an urban or suburban environment, yes,
• 23:39
  the instinct is to lock your reinforced door, retreat inward,
• 23:42
  and wait for a swat team. But in an off
• 23:44
  grid community like Puna, we are seeing the activation of
• 23:48
  a very different survival mechanism. It is a profound testament
• 23:54
  to rural resilience.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Explain the mechanism behind that. Why is walking outside safer
• 23:59
  than hiding in?
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Because in the jungle, isolation without visibility is a death sense.
• 24:05
  You have to remember that in off grid communities, relying
• 24:08
  on your neighbors is historically ingrained into daily survival.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about that earlier.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: So when a crisis hits and you know the police
• 24:15
  are stretched dangerously thin across an area the size of
• 24:18
  a wahoo, you instinctively understand that your immediate safety depends
• 24:23
  on the collective awareness of your neighborhood.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: So it is about establishing a perimeter of visibility.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly, by forming patrols along Red Road, they were organically
• 24:31
  generating their own psychological and physical safety nets. The sources
• 24:35
  are very careful to note that these were not vigilante mobs.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: They weren't grabbing pitchforks and hunting rifles to go track
• 24:41
  Baker down in the bush.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. They were establishing eyes on the ground.
• 24:46
  Barricading your door might feel safe for a moment, but
• 24:48
  it also means you are entirely blind to what is
• 24:51
  approaching your property.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Ah I see.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: By stepping out onto the road and connecting with their neighbors,
• 24:56
  they prioritize collective vigilance over isolated fear. They reclaimed a
• 25:01
  sense of agency and situational awareness in a scenario where
• 25:04
  they had been stripped of all control.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: They basically became their own early warning system. And thankfully,
• 25:10
  that agonizing tension finally broke on Thursday May twenty eighth
• 25:14
  at two point four to five pm.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: The manhunt concluded that must have been such a relief.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: It was. Jacob Daniel Baker was arrested without incident on
• 25:23
  Kalpanakapoho Road. The massive multi agency effort succeeded in its
• 25:27
  primary objective. They got him into custody safely, without a
• 25:30
  shootout and without any further bloodshed.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: The arrest acts as a massive release valve for the
• 25:35
  community's terror. The immediate threat of violence is neutral.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: But the aftermath of that adrenaline crash is devastating. It
• 25:42
  leaves the community with the heavy burden of mourning three
• 25:45
  men and the uncomfortable task of confronting the underlying socioeconomic
• 25:50
  realities that allowed this tragedy to fester in their backyard.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: We have to talk about the victims because their lives
• 25:58
  really highlight the tragedy of this vulnera.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's talk about them. Robert bob Shine was sixty
• 26:03
  nine years old. He was a transplant from the Mainland,
• 26:07
  and locals described him as an incredibly sweet, eclectic man
• 26:11
  with a lot of charm.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Chittamorse was seventy nine. He was widely respected as a
• 26:16
  guru of permaculture, a man deeply committed to eco friendly
• 26:20
  sustainable living who just wanted to cultivate his farm in peace.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And John Curs was sixty nine, described by those who
• 26:26
  knew him as quiet, independent and unassuming.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: These were not individuals living high risk lifestyles. They were
• 26:32
  not involved in criminal enterprises or living in a high
• 26:34
  crime urban sector. They were older men who had sought
• 26:38
  out what they believe was a peaceful sanctuary.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And the heartbreaking reality is that they were vulnerable precisely
• 26:44
  because trust, openness, and simplicity are the established norms in
• 26:48
  those alternative communities. They assumed the best of the people
• 26:51
  around them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: But their deaths forced us to look past the romanticized
• 26:55
  version of Puna and examine the hard economic realities of
• 26:59
  the region. Puna is a region grappling with intense, compounding struggles.
• 27:04
  You have the long term devastating economic and infrastructural recovery
• 27:08
  for the twenty eighteen kilaway of volcano eruptions, which destroyed
• 27:12
  hundreds of homes and isolated communities.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Even further, plus, you have the complex, often extractive impacts
• 27:18
  of tourism on the broader Hawaiian economy.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and critically, because land can be cheaper and regulations
• 27:24
  are looser, the area consistently draws a transient population. It
• 27:29
  attracts people seeking an alternative lifestyle, but it also attracts
• 27:32
  individuals struggling with severe substance abuse issues or untreated mental
• 27:36
  illness who have nowhere else to.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Go, which brings us to the legal road ahead for
• 27:40
  Jacob Baker, and it is going to be incredibly complex.
• 27:43
  He faces multiple homicide charges because.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: He used blunt force and no firearms. The prosecution is
• 27:49
  going to have to rely heavily on forensic evidence gathered
• 27:52
  from complex outdoor crime scenes.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: They will rely on the autopsies to establish the brutality
• 27:57
  of the attacks, and undoubtedly those has ignored tro filings
• 28:01
  are going to become a central piece of evidence, not
• 28:04
  just to show prior warnings, but to establish a documented
• 28:07
  timeline of his deteriorating state of mind.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Given the widely reported observations of his paranoia, erratic behavior,
• 28:15
  and potential schizophrenia, the defense is almost certainly going to
• 28:18
  explore mental health defenses or questions of his competency to
• 28:22
  stand trial.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: The justice system is going to be under an intense microscope.
• 28:26
  The community feels profoundly betrayed by the courts and the
• 28:29
  lack of communication that preceded the murders, and the trial
• 28:32
  will likely become a proxy for their demand for systemic accountability.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: I want to zoom out here because this story challenges
• 28:38
  a narrative that a lot of us hold on to.
• 28:40
  We all have that fantasy, especially when we are stuck
• 28:43
  in traffic or staring at a screen, or feeling crushed
• 28:45
  by the cost of living.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: The fantasy of escaping the rat race.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, we dream of buying a cheap piece of land
• 28:52
  off the grid, starting a permaculture garden, relying on rain water,
• 28:56
  and just completely checking out of modern society.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: We romanticize the absolute freedom of the off grid dream.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: But this horrific sequence of events forces us to confront
• 29:06
  the dark side of that dream. Because when you successfully
• 29:09
  strip away society's rules, its regulations, and its oversight, you
• 29:13
  also strip away its protections.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: It is the central, unavoidable paradox of alternative communities. They
• 29:20
  are founded on beautiful, utopian ideals of self reliance and
• 29:24
  mutual aid. They attract incredibly kind, idealistic, trusting individuals, people
• 29:30
  exactly like Bob Schein and Chittamorse. But because these communities
• 29:33
  operate outside the standard societal frameworks, because they are inherently
• 29:37
  unregulated and open by design, they can inadvertently become porous
• 29:41
  havens for individuals who have fallen through the cracks of
• 29:44
  mainstream society.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: People who are transient, people fleeing their past, or, in
• 29:48
  Baker's case, individuals suffering from profound untreated mental illness, who
• 29:53
  need intense professional intervention, not just a cabin in the woods.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: The very openness that defines the culture makes it uniquely
• 30:01
  vulnerable to risk. The sources point to an urgent, undeniable
• 30:05
  need for targeted investments in rural infrastructure.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: We are talking about rural policing models that are scaled
• 30:12
  to match the massive geographical realities of districts like Puna.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: We are talking about implementing dedicated crisis intervention teams, professionals
• 30:20
  who can bridge the gap between a civil court processing
• 30:23
  a death threat and a police dispatcher managing a patrol route.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: You need a system that doesn't shut down for Memorial
• 30:29
  Day when people's lives are.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: In danger, exactly, and most importantly, it highlights the desperate
• 30:34
  need for accessible, robust mental health services in rural areas.
• 30:39
  This tragedy proves that true independence, the ability to safely
• 30:42
  live off grid in a wild, beautiful place, still fundamentally
• 30:46
  requires a foundational safety net. You cannot simply opt out
• 30:49
  of the human condition, and the human condition includes severe
• 30:52
  mental health crises that require more than just the Aloha
• 30:55
  spirit to manage.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: So, to summarize the intense journey we've taken, through the
• 30:59
  source material. Today, we started by exploring the rugged, contrasting
• 31:03
  reality of the Puna District, a place defined by its
• 31:06
  volcanic soil, its vast geography, and its fierce culture of
• 31:10
  self reliance.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: We walk through the rapid, shocking timeline of those forty
• 31:14
  eight hours, examining how the isolation masked the initial murder
• 31:18
  and allowed a localized tragedy to escalate into an island
• 31:21
  wide manhunt.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: We deconstructed the tragic systemic failures, from the rigid evidentiary
• 31:27
  thresholds of civil judges to the fatal lack of agency
• 31:30
  communication that allowed a man and crisis to slip entirely
• 31:34
  through the cracks.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: And we witnessed the complex resilience of a community that,
• 31:38
  when left completely exposed, stepped out onto red road to
• 31:41
  form a human perimeter of safety.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: It is a heavy, complex narrative, but it is one
• 31:46
  that demands deep reflection on our own definitions of security.
• 31:50
  If we connect all of this to the bigger picture,
• 31:52
  it raises a crucial question that I want to leave
• 31:54
  you with today.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Consider how you define safety in your own life. We
• 31:58
  often equate safety with distance.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: We think we are safe when we put physical distance
• 32:02
  between ourselves and the city, distance from the crowds, distance
• 32:06
  from the stress, and a constant oversight of modern bureaucracy.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: We view isolation as a shield against a chaotic world,
• 32:14
  but this tragedy in Puna asks us to fundamentally reevaluate
• 32:17
  that belief. Does true safety actually require absolute self.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Reliance or does it demand the very community oversight, the interconnectedness,
• 32:25
  and the bureaucratic safety nets that we sometimes try so
• 32:28
  desperately to escape.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: You have to ask yourself, when you build a life
• 32:32
  completely apart from the rest of the world, where exactly
• 32:34
  is the line between finding a sanctuary and building yourself
• 32:37
  a trap.