That's what keeps eating at me. They are not behaving like people on the run. They do not appear nervous in interactions with the police, not just now but going back to CV's shooting. I live here in Hawaii and, trust me, it would be VERY easy to just disappear here, at least on the Big Island. We have lap-of-luxury places, but you'd be tracked there. We also have beautiful places where no one would every find you. With a little money you can hire people to turn your little place into luxury.
They could start going by Kada and Loli (Hawaiian versions of their names), befriend a few locals and let them know the heat is on and half the island would protect them. It did not take me long after I moved here to figure that out so given Loli's history I'm sure she is aware of that.
I have a friend who is a cop here and after telling him where I live (behind a gate, half a mile up a private road, and 200 yards down my private driveway) he told me he could never take a call to my house unless I, as the owner, called 911 from my property...and I'd have to give them the gate code because, while the fire department has it, the police do not. Unless I were accused of a very serious crime, it would be hard to get a search warrant because the judge would question why they are intruding on my privacy. He used to work on the mainland and says being a cop here is a joke because they are so restricted and short handed. They can't do much more than respond to immediate emergencies and write traffic tickets to raise money for the county. Please don't take this as disparagement of LE, far from it. We have a huge ice problem and lots of petty crime like theft. They just don't have the resources to deal with it and the county will never have the budget to get them the resources they need. Every time a tourist gets bit by a shark, has a purse snatched, or gets their car broken into it takes all of the police resources for one quarter of the island for a up to half a shift. A car accident is similar. If someone is seriously injured or killed, the police are 100% shut down for most of that day on at least half the island!
Look into what is going on in Honolulu right now. The police chief was indicted on federal corruption charges as as was his wife a senior prosecutor. Her boss the city/county prosecutor was recently forced out as well for helping her. Her brother, a prominent doctor and her were indicted for drug trafficking by the feds. No one in authority in Hawaii acted. They were not even investigated. Other senior cops assisted in their crimes. The feds had to step in. My point is, this is the wild west, unless you are on drugs, it's very easy to get away with almost anything. Even murderers don't get long sentences the first couple of times. McGarret is not on the job here!
My partner has a very close relative who has been on the "run" here since shooting at the cops a couple of years ago. She has no idea where he is of course but another relative of hers, a cop, joked at a family event recently that they'll never find him because he just isn't a priority. That's the way things are here. It's not that the cops are incompetent. It's just that it's a vast area, mostly remote, and the tax base only supports a tiny police force. Kauai is not much different. They could easily blend in and disappear yet they chose not to.
My point is only that this would be an easy place to just disappear even if you had killed half a dozen people. Lori would have known that. Yet they chose to leave tracks and be in the open. That confuses me. Maybe it's just narcissism and not being capable of tasting death. But it could also be innocence. MM
