323. The Killer in the Bucket Hat

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If you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.com slash husband. To start your free trial today. Again, you guys, if you've ever just wanted to sell anything big, small, any company out there that is selling something, head over to Shopify.com slash husband and check it out. That's right. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash husband. Shopify.com slash husband. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Happy Monday. Welcome back, guys. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Thank you for supporting. What have you been up to? I have a rash on my face. Peyton has a little rash on her face. Yes. That's all I can think about. Just a reminder, we have bonus content and ad-free content on Apple, Spotify, and Patreon. If you're interested, you can go check that out. But what I wanted to talk about for my 10 seconds is, so I've been drinking these. This isn't an ad. Just letting everyone know. This is personal. I've been drinking these ginger, lemon, and cayenne pepper shots because I've been working a lot and I really don't want to get sick. And I feel like everyone else around me is sick right now, so I've been drinking one of these a day. And I feel like it's been helping. But it could just be a placebo effect. So I'm curious if for anyone who knows a lot about juicing and turmeric and ginger and all that stuff, does it actually help? Is it actually helping me or am I just drinking these for no reason? Because they burn. When you drink these things, they burn. Your throat is crazy. Anyways, yeah, that's my 10 seconds. I'm just curious. I never know what works and what doesn't work these days. So I feel like I always have to ask people. I can do research into it, but I also want to hear about it from you guys. What a weird world we live in that you can't actually just trust what the packaging says. Or like what the. Studies say. I mean, I. I don't even think it's studies. Like you hear about things and then they're like, oh, we're taking your supplements. And then a year later, they're like, most supplements don't even actually make it through your stomach. It's like, what? Yeah, I know. There's like, there's just so much research that goes into this stuff. Anyways, so does it work? I've been drinking it. I haven't gotten sick. So let me know. Daisy's been. So Daisy, I can't say this word out loud. So you guys are going to have to spell. We went to California for a few days and we were able to get away. For Gary's birthday. My birthday. And we went to the P-O-O-L. And she. The S-W-A-M a lot. And. Like a lot. But she's just been. I think she's depressed. She's been very sad the last couple of days since we've been back. And tired. And tired. I think she's sad. But she's such a little fake. Because I don't know if fake, but when we do the P-O-O-L days, all day long. All day. Going, going. Never runs out of energy. But then sleeps all day. I'm like, well. Yeah, and we get home and she's sleeping all day. I'm like, hmm. How does that work? Like right now, just look at her sleeping. And then I think. Passed out. Her muscles have to be so sore after those long days. I think she's just tired. Because it's not just the. It's not just the playing in the water. She runs. She gets out of the pool and runs. For like six, eight hours. She's just swimming, running, swimming, running, swimming, running. She's frantic. Yeah. Crazy. Anyways. That's what I got. That's my 10 seconds. Let's hop into this week's episode. Okay. Our sources for this episode are CBSnews.com, HawaiiTribuneHerald.com, KHON2.com, HawaiiPublicRadio.org, StarAdvertiser.com, HawaiiNewsNow.com, NBCNews.com, KITV.com, LawAndCrime.com, MariettaTimes.com, HappyScribe.com, and PeacockTV. Now, most people, when they think of, they probably imagine crystal blue beaches, warm summer air on your skin, maybe a Mai Tai in front of a sunset. But if you've visited, you know Hawaii is so much more than that. The culture there is unlike anything else. It seems like everyone is always smiling, helpful, thoughtful, kind. In fact, they have a word for the energy and lifestyle. It's called the Aloha. Aloha spirit. But even in a place built on warmth and compassion, true crime still exists. Sorry, do we have any listeners from Hawaii? Probably. Anyways, if you're listening from Hawaii, let us know. And how sad Hawaii is not exempt from our podcast. Because it feels like it should be. So darkness can definitely still slip through because Hawaii, despite always being on island time, has real people, with real problems and real secrets. Which is why today's story is a reminder that sometimes evil can strike in the places we least expect it to. Even in paradise. So, based on that intro, you probably know where we're headed to today. We are headed to the state of Hawaii, the island of Oahu to be exact. Where just northwest of Pearl Harbor lies the small community of Waipahu. And I did look up how to say these. I know the accent is probably not correct. I'm definitely saying it in a very American, like non-Hawaii accent. But Waipahu. Nice job, baby. Thanks. You're welcome. Now, Waipahu is a working class town with a lot of ancient history. A place where families have known each other for generations, where childhood friends stick with you for life, where you refer to each other for a long time, where you refer to each other for a long time, where you refer to your neighbors as auntie and uncle, where life definitely moves slow, but news spreads fast. And in a place like that, secrets, if you want to keep them, need to be protected with your life. And unfortunately, that was the price John Tokuhara paid to keep his secrets. In the year 2022, 47-year-old John was living in Waipahu, Waipahu, the place he had spent most of his life in Hawaii. And so everyone there knew John. They knew him as a good person. He had been like that ever since he was a little kid. He studied hard. He was extremely athletic. Baseball, surfing, fishing, volleyball, you name it. And in high school, he even led his volleyball team to a few championships. But like most young adults, John wanted to experience more of the world or at least more of his country. So he ended up going to the mainland for college and studied at the University of Portland where he got his degree in biology. And then after that, he actually earned a master's degree in Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Now, this master's degree wasn't exactly surprising to those who knew John. He'd always just had that calm, soft, protective spirit. The kind of guy who would volunteer his time to help veterans, who always wanted to make a living, and to make sure everyone was happy and comfortable. So after receiving his degree, John then returned back to Hawaii after spending six years away. He moves back and he opens up a small acupuncture studio in his hometown and became known locally as, quote, the healer. Now, he had a modest operation. John was the only one who worked at this little clinic. And it also allowed him the freedom and flexibility to enjoy the little world. He also had the little pleasures of life. He kept his canoe and surfboard at his acupuncture clinic and had no problem closing up early for a day at sea if a client canceled or rescheduled. So John loves being his own boss. He's in charge of his own destiny, free to come and go as he pleases, and doesn't have to answer to anyone, which was probably why he chose to stay single for a while and never really settle down because he was just living this Hawaii dream life. but John didn't need a partner to feed him. fulfilled. He had a huge circle of friends, and there was always someone he was flirting with or just dating casually. Most women actually found John to be excessively charming. He had a huge smile, kind eyes. It was no wonder he had a lot of female clients. And one of his specialties in this field was actually fertility acupuncture. Now, a lot of women came to John specifically when they were trying to get pregnant. So all of this to say, John was one of a kind in Waipahu. And by 2022, he had firmly cemented himself, not just as the basically unofficial mayor, but as someone the town definitely relied on, someone they needed to feel safe, happy, healthy, and balanced. So you can imagine how shocked and devastated everyone was when they heard about the events that came next in this story. Okay, let's hear it. On the evening of January 12th, 2022, John closed up his shop after seeing his final client. He then texted a woman he had recently started dating, a local school teacher named Andy, and he tells her he had a bit more work and some phone calls to make. And this was at about 5.30 p.m. And then a half hour later, John and his mother, Lily, also speak on the phone. And she invites him over for dinner that night. At around 6.12 p.m., she texts him asking if Andy, the, you know, friendly teacher, will be joining. And John responds to the text message and says, it's just going to be me tonight. And then at 6.15, his mother, Lily, texts him back saying, okay. And her message is read, but there's no response after that. So now we have dinner plans, cemented. She knows it's just John coming. He's read her message. Good to go. But instead, an hour ticks by. And then two. And it's now 8.34 p.m. And John hasn't made it to Lily's house for dinner yet. It's getting late. She's getting worried, as his mother. So she texts him again and says, are you still at the office? No response. And this time her message is left unread. So she texts him again at 8.32 p.m. saying, are you okay? The message is still unread. So when she wakes up the next morning and realizes her son still isn't answering his calls or texts, she decides to just go to his office to talk to him. So Lily heads over, she walks inside, and that's when she actually finds her son, John, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood in his office. Lily barely musters a call to 911. And as soon as the police arrive, they know they definitely have a homicide case on their hands. And just keep in mind, this is shocking for everyone in this local area. This is not necessarily a big tourist area. It's very family-oriented, home, smaller. So they're all like, oh no, our local healer has died. Okay. So the police arrive at the office, and it appears that John was shot while sitting in his office chair, and then from there fell onto the floor. Now there's no signs of a struggle or a fight of any kind. It doesn't even appear to be a robbery because nothing's been taken. In fact, there's about $3,900 in cash wrapped up and labeled with the word herbs in a backpack lying right under his desk, like next to his body. So if this was a robbery, that would have probably been taken. Now, an autopsy will later determine John was shot not once, but four times in the head. So this is definitely a targeted killing. It's personal. Now, before the story can even make its way to the headlines that day, all of Waipahu knows about it. Each person finds it more unbelievable than the next. How does someone so caring, so kind, selfless end up as a murder victim? And as far as everyone knows, John was basically liked by everyone. His friends couldn't think of a single enemy. And if it wasn't a robbery, then what was this? Well, the police are just as baffled as John's friends and family are. They don't even know where to start when it comes to suspects. So they quickly turn to the public for help, asking if anyone saw anything. There's a suspicious vehicle in the area, a suspicious person, anything that seemed out of place. And meanwhile, flowers pile up outside of John's clinic. And the town holds a vigil for John, where pretty much every single person in Waipahu shows up to pay their respects. His surfer friends arrange something called a paddle out where hundreds go out on their boards to the ocean. They form a, like, processional ceremony and deliver John's ashes from the beach to the sea. People said, you would have thought John was a celebrity with how many people came out to mourn his loss. But for police, that also meant a lot more people demanding answers, wanting to know what had happened. 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Expirited transfers available for a fee tips are voluntary and don't affect the service available in select States terms and restrictions apply. Visit earning.com for full details. And there were two big things about the crime scene that investigators couldn't stop thinking about from the beginning. First was that backpack filled with cash underneath the desk. The one labeled herbs. The second was John. He was wearing a surgical mask on his face when he was shot. The kind that we all wore during COVID, but why are you wearing a mask if you're in your office alone after hours? So this made police wonder, was John actually expecting someone? Was there supposed to be some sort of exchange or transaction that went sideways? Was he in debt to someone he was trying to repay? So detectives decide to look through his appointment book. And they see there was nothing on the books for that night. His last client left the clinic at 5.30 PM. It was a woman named Kathy Ahama. So they call her in for questioning to see if she noticed anything strange, considering she's like the last known to see him that they know of. And she says, John was acting normal at her appointment. He didn't seem nervous or depressed or irritable, just his same old self. So this is when they turned to Andy, John's new girlfriend, if you will, and while she herself has never seemed suspicious to them they do learn something about her past andy had been dating someone named daryl fugita for years and basically every time she and daryl broke up she would get together with john and this was including after this most recent breakup so this wasn't just a casual thing between daryl and andy they actually had a house they had a kid together and john was her rebound her in between and daryl knew about john i don't i just have no i have no idea right now like no hints nothing is kind of giving it away so so police called daryl in for questioning thinking okay maybe this is some sort of like jealousy thing but throughout his interview he keeps telling police listen yeah this is our situation but there's no bad blood between him and john he didn't care that andy would date him so officers are like hey can we see your phone he gives it to them but he does a hard factory reset first now obviously this makes him look suspicious like what's he trying to hide but also like he's probably could be one of the persons that's like i deserve privacy i don't know so the police definitely have their eye on daryl i mean that's kind of weird but it's not enough for an arrest no so they keep searching for evidence they canvas the area around john's clinic looking for any place that has some kind of security footage and they post up for hours watching all of the videos they gather frame by frame until eventually they actually see something of note a person walking toward john's clinic on the day of his murder they're standing on the other side of the street and just staring at his door but what police find interesting is this person's outfit they have sunglasses a surgical mask a heavy windbreaker jacket and a white bucket hat and they are carrying a brown paper bag now they're in hawaii this is weird it's a hot day a heavy windbreaker doesn't make much sense but still this person is captured along multiple cameras in the area kind of just wandering around and he's seen there just four minutes before john stops responding to those texts to his mom okay that's kind of interesting but the person is never seen walking through the front door of john's acupuncture clinic instead he crosses the street walks past the front door and then turns left and heads down the street almost like towards the back of the office building but there's no cameras back there so police have to assume he either went that way and left or went that way and went in and then shortly after 6 15 p.m the bucket hat figure reappears headed in the office building and he's in the opposite direction he came after only disappearing behind that building for about a minute and a half okay now police realize like this timeline does fit perfectly and they feel pretty confident that whoever this person is is now their number one suspect they're pretty sure this person went behind the building went in and in a minute and a half shot him and left and they also see something happen on the security footage the person's bucket hat actually flies off into the road as they're crossing the street and they don't go back for it it's almost like they don't even notice it like they notice it but it's not a big deal to them and instead the hat just sits in the road for a bit until what seems like an unhoused man walks by and picks it up and then the footage shows the suspect walk back in the original direction they came and that's when you realize they maybe didn't even notice the hat fly off and it's because underneath that hat they were wearing some kind of ridiculous wig no way curly almost like a clown wig like the wig was stuck in the hat well the hat came off the wig but that's probably why they didn't even really like register oh i see what you're saying because they didn't feel it come off their actual head because there was that layer of disguise uh-huh but two good things come from this footage as police continue to analyze it first they get a pretty good screenshot of the man who picked up the hat so about 10 days later they go to the area they find a local encampment and they track down the man who picked up the hat and shockingly he still has this it's balled up lying next to a cooler which is tricky because the hope was they could test this hat for evidence but now there's a possibility it's been touched by a dozen different people still they take it and send it to the honolulu police department's crime lab for testing so in the meantime they keep looking over that footage just this is their only lead they're combing it have they missed anything and that's when they do see a specific white pickup truck one that seems to arrive in the area before the alleged attacker comes on screen and then leaves pretty shortly after the man's hat flies off now unfortunately they can't make out the driver in the truck to tell if it's the person but they do see a specific white pickup truck that seems to arrive in the area before the alleged attacker comes on screen and then leaves pretty shortly after the man's hat flies off now unfortunately they can't make out the driver in the truck to tell if it's the person and they aren't even able to get a license plate but that doesn't stop them from calling in an expert an expert who helps them identify the make and model somewhere between a 2014 and 2016 white chevy silverado and when they run this model through the local dmv's database they find there's about 53 of those vehicles registered in the area that could be a match i mean that's not bad no honestly that's not bad it's not too bad it might it seems like a lot but like could you imagine yeah no it seems like a lot that's actually not that's not too bad you can comb through 53 so they start going through the owners one by one looking to see if any of them even had a connection to the victim john because that's that's the other thing i mean if the car stole and then you're really out of luck right but eventually they do narrow it down to one person an owner a man named eric thompson so now let's figure out why eric stood out to police a little bit about 34 year old eric he was a local business owner of a place called island bath works which specialized in bathtub conversions for the elderly or those with special needs he was a graduate of the university of hawaii he had married his high school sweetheart joyce he had a young daughter and lived in a nice neighborhood just east of downtown honolulu their home had a tennis court rental units on site okay was a quick walk to the beach making money especially in hawaii is so expensive not just houses everything like everything there is extremely expensive and the thing was like on the surface no one who knew john had ever heard of eric or joyce thompson before so the connection doesn't make much sense but the police feel differently because they are the ones who had access to john's phone and computer so they're the ones who had access to eric's phone and computer and they had found something on there they weren't expecting john actually had a private instagram account his family didn't know about and in that account thousands of messages exchanged between john and joyce thompson messages that basically indicated an affair now joyce is eric's why got it high school sweetheart to be exact so when they know this when they know there's an alleged affair and they're going through the pickup truck owners and they realize that eric joyce's husband owns one they're like yeah duh this is our number one suspect now their affair seemed to start up around may of 2021 and lasted until about july of that year and towards the end joyce had expressed fears of her husband finding out and she was the one who called things off okay but here's how it played out from eric's side of things her husband before the birth of eric and joyce thompson in 2020 eric and joyce were having a hard time trying to conceive and after months of failed attempts and miscarriages a friend recommended that joyce go to see an acupuncturist on wapahu known as the healer that's obviously john now after several treatments with john joyce finally did get pregnant and they had their little girl in june of 2020 but eric said joyce struggled a after the birth of their daughter so joyce decided to return to john for more treatments thinking it would help her postpartum okay this isn't a secret okay her husband eric knows she's going knows where she's going but over time there were little things joyce was saying and doing that just felt strange for example there was one time when joyce claimed some family friends were in town but instead of getting a sitter and inviting him to come along she asked eric to watch their daughter while she goes out and sees the family friends it was little things like this that started to make eric question what joyce was up to in her alone time which was why he began keeping a closer eye on their home security cameras and after he returned home from a work trip and played them back one day he saw that joyce had actually left the house one night while he was away without telling him and so that was when he felt for sure okay joyce is sneaking around on me so in july of 2021 eric confronted her about it and she denies it for about two days and then finally she confesses to everything okay and when eric asked okay well are you cheating with one of our family friends she's like no it's with john my acupuncturist so i mean i think i know where this is going but eric's totally blindsided even stranger joyce tells her husband it was her psychic that was encouraging her to have this affair what is up apparently joyce consulted with psychics for a lot of her decision making that's nuts and they were the ones who were like yeah step out of your marriage here's the green light you know i hear this happen a lot you got to be careful with the sidekick i hear this happen a lot yeah it's crazy to me and you know you gotta have your own intuition even if you fully trust in a sidekick you have to because at the end of the day you know you better than anyone a hundred a hundred percent agreed at least in your heart you know dude i'd be so mad at that sidekick and also like so mad are you kidding me giving the green light for an affair is very different than giving the green light for a divorce like a sidekick being like listen i don't think this marriage is for you you've tried everything you don't want to be here i'm also on the side of everyone just has to kind of experience and make decisions themselves at some point yeah like even if you're trying to tell a friend or someone like hey you shouldn't be dating this person or you shouldn't do that totally okay to do that but i feel like decisions are never made until that person actually has an experience and makes a decision like i think it's pretty hard to actually convince someone to make a decision about something big in life like that like someone has to someone has to do it themselves out of their own free will right anyways i don't know just my thoughts because oftentimes if they don't either they end up doing it wrong they either regret it or they go back with the person i mean i don't know there's so many just there's so many things and this is hard because like is it is a sidekick really different than like a friend like a good trusted friend at this point who's like encouraging this bad behavior or well that depends how much you you're going to be able to do it right so i think it's really important to have a belief that the sidekick knows the future or not true so i think that i think there's variables there anyways listen i know they say everything happens for a reason but it's sometimes you really can't just leave you know what i'm saying yeah like sometimes you really don't need that excuse you can just not do it here's the thing when eric finally gets in front of the police because police call him in they're like hey you have this truck you have this connection he's like listen i had nothing to do with john's death eric said he was planning to work through the situation with his wife like they were gonna work through it they were gonna go to therapy get the whole thing behind them they agreed on signing a post-marital agreement which would give eric everything including the house and custody of their daughter should their marriage come to an end whether it was his fault or hers eric said he looked at the affair as a sign that he was falling short a bit in as a partner in their marriage and that he needed to be there more for joyce's she didn't feel like she was needing to seek attention and joyce claimed she didn't actually want to leave her husband either she too wanted to work through it which was why she had ended the affair and eric does tell police like yes i'm very angry of course i considered confronting john about the affair but he says he never followed through he just left it alone and focused on working on his marriage now from october to december of that year according to joyce and eric things were looking up between the thompsons they were seen photographed together at several different holiday outings plus eric told police no i have an alibi for the night of january 12 2022 the night john died he said at around the time of john's death which is pretty specific considering the security footage he was on the other side of the island getting rid of some construction debris at a dump and then at 9 54 p.m he went to long's drugs in a residential area of honolulu to buy beers and cigarettes and eggs and then after that he went home a good alibi he said he actually learned about john's death the following afternoon when joyce received the call that john had been killed but from what i could tell police were actually never able to like fully corroborate eric's whereabouts that night or find evidence to confirm his alibi it's not like they could see his you know that seems interesting though it seems like they could get the cameras from the it feels like maybe there's not a lot of cameras in the area okay like there's definitely some but maybe not as much as a large city if you will which is why in early february the police decide to search the thompson's home for evidence and not only did they see eric's pickup truck exactly like the one spotted in the footage around john's clinic they also find a lot of guns in the thompson's house about 12 total ton of ammunition some of it was found in the house and some of it was found in the house and some of it was 22 caliber this is the same type that was found at the crime scene however none of the guns or bullets exactly matched the shell casings found at the scene and when police confiscated and searched eric's phone and computer they didn't find a single text call email search history anything that was indicating he was planning to kill john okay so all right so if eric didn't do it who did it well it gets even worse because there's no sign his phone ever traveled around to waipahu on the day in question and there's no evidence that he tried to get in contact with john since the affair ended in july the year before it looks like he really did just leave it alone all right you guys this episode is sponsored by better help if you could wake up tomorrow and be better at one thing what would that be what would it be what would you pick probably handling my anxiety better that'd be nice yeah that's a good one that would be great i don't know what might be to be honest i have to think about the one so i need better help i need to talk to someone about it to figure out what mine would be well i mean isn't this question just tied directly to why you would go to therapy no exactly one thing you want to work on or be better at that's where better help comes in pain and i're both big fans of better help um talking to someone is important there's so much to talk about even if you don't think there is anything to talk about talk to someone you never know honestly sometimes yourself you don't even know what's going on in your own also it can be as simple as i want to be better at watering my plants literally a therapist can help you with that it's true better is a feeling defined by you and for better help it's a better help therapist who really gets you it's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries it's progress sign up and get 10 off at betterhelp.com husband that's better h-e-l-p.com husband getting into an ad over here and when we were kids summer meant freedom no homework no teachers no school and as adults summer still means freedom thanks to mint mobile's summer sell right now all of mint's plans are 15 per month even unlimited so for yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas and 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gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability speed and coverage very cement mobile.com so basically at this point the only thing that's going to happen is that you're going to have to go to mint mobile.com connecting eric to the crime was a potential motive an affair that had ended seven months ago and then possibly his car on some footage be extremely difficult to bring to yeah and extremely police realize at this point they're like either eric is innocent or he's good at cleaning up his tracks like we haven't found anything but they still have that huge clue that needs to be analyzed the bucket hat detectives are hoping they can find dna from the hat that will prove their theory is correct i mean i know it's i guess big evidence but i still don't think that's like damning evidence i mean if you find dna in a hat that you think the suspect was wearing i don't know if it's like but how can you also prove that that was a gun that that was a suspect right i think it's really easy to argue for a defense team to be like what if he picked it up and wore it later what if he had it before that correct yeah that's what i'm saying yes the results finally do come back in 2022 most of them are inconclusive okay but there's two that said eric could not be excluded as a contributor now this is not definitive not by a long shot but it's enough for them to decide to get an arrest warrant for eric they're like listen we couldn't exclude you from the bucket hat we think you have the most motive your truck does match the security footage like we're gonna move i mean yeah to me honestly this the part that's the most like criminalizing or damning is the is the truck matching the security footage well and you have a pretty clear-cut motive i mean this is a motive we see time and time again and murder yeah and we talk about it all the time i mean how many coincidences can there possibly be like how can you be the guy your wife was or how can this be the guy your wife was having an affair with and then the truck and then now the hat yes so i mean it does make sense why police are like and we're gonna move forward with it even though it's not great and on valentine's day 2022 on valentine's on eric and joyce's fifth wedding anniversary eric is arrested and charged with murder after posting his one million dollar bail eric's allowed to go home but he does have to be under house arrest after a prosecutor argues to the judge that his wealth makes him kind of a flight risk still on april 22nd 2022 he's indicted on charges of second degree murder wow and carrying or using a firearm so eric's trial begins in 2023 okay i'm going to say that actually you just go just go okay so i'm just going to lay out quickly what each side presented at trial because there was obviously some stuff that wasn't in the initial investigation so the defense makes a pretty interesting argument they point out hey john had a quote track record of cheating joyce was not the first married woman he had slept with also not the first client either in fact two other men whose wives had affairs with john were called to this to the stand and the defense also pointed out that there were plenty of women that john had dated and then ghosted who could have been angry they're just pointing out possible motives for other people there's other husbands who could have been mad there's other women who could have been mad and they also claimed john had a bit of a gambling addiction which might have explained the money and the mask that was found at the crime scene perhaps he was planning on paying someone back that day the defense's point was listen there might have been a couple might have been a lot of people who had motive to kill john but the police zeroed in on eric because of his truck and the defense is like they didn't really consider anyone else but the prosecution brought something else up their sleeve to trial they had security footage taken from a neighbor's camera pointed at the thompson's home now if you remember he has his alibi it's not like they could really track him at the dump but this footage on the thompson's home is not like they could really track him on the night of the murder shows eric's truck leaving the house at 5 20 p.m okay this is about an hour before john was shot at the clinic and he returns at 6 48 p.m just 30 minutes after the kill so here's a which doesn't match no his original story it starts not matching someone's story i mean red flags and oh you lied he didn't come around home till nine they now have on neighbor's security footage he is going to be shot at the dump and he's going to be shot at the house in the time window that john is killed and how in court do you all of a sudden go oh well actually like no that's not the only thing interesting from that night a little while later the same neighbor catches the camera catches a light flickering in the thompson's backyard it looks like a fire or a bonfire and the prosecution is like why were you lighting a fire late that night were you possibly destroying evidence yeah well detectives take the stand and say while they never actually saw evidence of a bonfire in the thompson's yard they did find a pot that had char marks on it and a wheelbarrow that was pretty burnt but the defense obviously has a rebuttal for that they're like listen there was no fire these were tiki torches in the family's backyard this is hawaii after all it couldn't have been eric's truck on the surveillance video because he was on the other side of oahu getting rid of construction debris that night remember and they reminded the jury the dna results did not conclusively state they were a match for eric his guns and ammunition did not conclusively match the ones at the crime scene and there was zero digital evidence at all which this part i do understand so let's say we think he we think he did it if there's any doubt at all that he maybe didn't should we send him to prison for life i mean according to the law no exactly and so that well reasonable reasonable yes but and that's where things start getting tricky and start getting that's where the gray area is and i think this is like an interesting point because i think sometimes reasonable reasonable doubt is taken as like if there is any anything at all that says no but no we can have some it's reasonable like okay but yeah there's another option that's reasonable it's hard it really is hard i mean again how it i mean look at look at crimes today how many google searches how much cell phone history his cell phone history doesn't show him going over there granted he could have not taken it but there's so much digital evidence that in a year like this should have been found and there was nothing yeah and that would be hard for me because with how much we use our phones and how much digital evidence there should be if there's nothing that would make me be like i don't know nothing beforehand either they couldn't find him looking john up him looking for the address him looking for the phone number like there was nothing at all or it was done on another phone or something else right which is what the prosecution is saying he's just good at cleaning up his tracks like the reason we don't have the evidence is not because it didn't exist it's because he was good but you can't prove that no you can't say you can't prove that he was a good murderer correct you know what i mean this is hard this is tough yeah but you do have the security footage showing he was gone in the window yep and you do have a possible match for his truck on security yeah that's it though like as far as is this possible now eric's trial resulted in a hung jury they couldn't come to an agreement which i don't think is that surprising it's a mistrial and a new court date was set for february 2025 wow there was a big problem going into his second trial the judge didn't want to allow the police department's DNA analysis of the hat to be brought up into evidence this time in the second trial and you might be like well why according to a woman named liz thompson who worked with the fbi on cases like this no relation by the way the honolulu pd's lab wasn't validating their results basically she claimed there's this process of checks and balances to make sure dna results like can't be replicated and this wasn't done in this case so the state technically couldn't use the bucket hat dna in trial number two which was one of their strongest stronger pieces of evidence being like we couldn't rule him out he could have easily this could be his dna on the hat i don't think he gets convicted and i don't know if i think he did it or not i don't know the prosecution tries to find a loophole they get the judge to allow results from a private analyst instead so not the state but a hired private analyst someone with a company called cyber genetics who presented their analysis on the bucket hat and what they found apparently was even more convincing than the honolulu pd's crime lab's initial finding they found that the odds that this dna came from eric thompson were 16.4 trillion times higher than the odds that it came from a random unrelated individual so basically they're saying aka eric thompson's head was in that hat like that's that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying that's what the private analysis is and they're saying the rest of the trial honestly played out similarly to the last one like this was very similar except this part the jury went to deliberate and not guilty they're split again okay judge sends them back like nope we're not getting this hung jury go back and figure it out you're gonna get a verdict few of them said it came down to eric's decision to testify on his own behalf when he got up and testified in his second trial they found him cold like a little tense and quote lame but like low-key if i was being tried for a murder i didn't commit i'm not sure i would be very like warm and bubbly on the stand yeah i don't know i don't yeah you know i think i would be defensive as well i'd be like no i didn't do this but there still seemed to be a lot of reasonable doubt watching the footage over and over most of the jurors couldn't even be sure if they were looking at a man or a woman that was walking in the bucket hat let alone whether it's eric thompson but after three days of deliberating alliances started shifting votes started flipping yeah verdict was met eric thompson was found guilty of second degree murder interesting okay he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the murder charge and was given an additional 20 years for the weapons charge these would run concurrently he must serve a minimum of 15 years before he's eligible for parole but i still think there's a lot of questions that linger in this case is there more to the story between eric and love triangle murder that has absolutely zero history. history between the murder i mean and the victim that we can find coincidences and i don't know i'm glad that i don't i don't know there's nothing we don't have anyone from john's family being like oh yeah eric was crazy he was stalking john we don't have anyone from eric's family being like yeah he went and found john i assume he obviously claims his innocence today is there anything going on with that or not really no he's just he has 15 years yeah so the question is is eric just that good at covering up his tracks no digital evidence very little crime scene evidence almost no dna evidence had he kept that hat on his head would he have gotten away with murder like if that private analysis hadn't come through and said no it's almost probably pretty sure like if he just hadn't lost the hat on the way out and he is the murderer would he not have been yeah i mean it's a good chance i think so and seven months after the affair ended he kills his wife's affair partner did eric know something that no one else did did something go wrong did someone get it wrong what i can say is this in a place known for its aloha spirit you'd expect these answers to come easy but unfortunately in this case pieces of the truth might be lost forever in paradise and that is the murderer of john tokuhara it's hard because like who else would have done it like who else would have done it right like i mean i don't know it sounds like this guy was sleeping with everyone's wives so maybe someone else would have done it and like pissing women off because he did date around he was a lot of people that would have killed them and if the gambling debt is true and the person who showed up was actually just there to collect on a debt and didn't end up taking the money because that's pretty obvious i mean do i think he probably did it yes is there a chance he didn't do it also yes so i don't know how i feel i also don't love the idea that like the first trial was a hung jury the second trial was a hung jury and they made them yeah i don't like that yeah so judge is allowed to do that he's allowed to be like no go back no go back you're putting your life it's weird to put your life in all these random strangers hands and i think for me like the fact the jury came out afterwards and openly said i didn't vote that way first but after being forced to sit there for three days and forced to come to an agreement i switched my vote i'm not a fan that feels weird i agree i don't know yeah all right you guys that was our episode for today and we will see you next time with another one i love it and i hate it goodbye hello look what tj maxx dragged in the devil wears prada 2 is now streaming on disney plus and hulu we are digital we are downloadable we are streamable the fashion industry event of the year is certified fresh pull yourself together we have work to do critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel that's all get runway ready for the devil wears prada 2 on disney plus and hulu rated pg-13