Beneath the Palms: Hawaii's Darkest True Crime & Mysteries

She was one of the wealthiest women in America.

A co-founder of Stanford University. A widow. A fighter.

And in 1905, she came to Waikiki to rest—to recover from a poisoning attempt back home.

But on her second night at the Moana Hotel, Jane Stanford collapsed.

Her body convulsed. Her jaw locked.

And by the time the doctor arrived, it was already too late.

The coroner called it murder.

The Honolulu jury agreed.

But when her body was shippe...

He’d already killed two women.
Twice, the system let him go.

And in 1995, when Doneshia “RoxAnne” Kastner begged for help—filed reports, got a restraining order, called the police—no one stopped him.

He followed her to her car.
Left her notes she never wanted.
And one night… he let himself in.

RoxAnne saw the danger. She tried to protect her son. She did everything the system said she should.
But no one listened.

And by the time they did—i...

In 1959, Eugene Barrett shot his ex-wife, Annie Eva Phillips, after stalking and threatening her for months.

He served just eight years.

In 1972, he killed again—stabbing his estranged wife, Roberta Ululani Aveiro, to death in a Waikiki hotel room.

And again… he got out.

By the 1990s, Barrett was living quietly in Makiki. Smiling at neighbors. Painting flowers. Hiding in plain sight.

He wasn’t supposed to be free.

But Hawaii’s broken sys...

She was sealed in silence. Wrapped in a blanket. Tucked inside a metal box—and left in a Honolulu closet for over 50 years. No name. No report. No obituary.
Just bones.

In 2014, a maintenance worker clearing out an apartment near Pearl Harbor made a chilling discovery: a toddler’s skeleton hidden inside a duct-taped metal container. No one knew who she was. No one had reported her missing.

For nearly a decade, she was known only as Ha...

He was quiet. Retired. A face no one looked twice at.

Living in Makawao, Maui — a world away from the violence he left behind.

But in August 2022, a knock at his door shattered the silence.
Gary Gene Ramirez had been hiding in plain sight for 40 years.

In 1982, 15-year-old Karen Stitt was brutally murdered in Sunnyvale, California.
Stabbed 59 times. Bound with her own clothing. Left behind a fence like trash.

The case went cold.
Until one...

He told them he was house-sitting.
That Gary was off-island.
That everything was fine.

The police believed him—and walked away.

But sealed inside the bathtub of a luxury Hawaii Loa Ridge home… was a body.
Wrapped in plastic. Bound. Gagged. Buried beneath wet concrete and layered with coffee grounds.

The killer hadn’t fled the scene.
He was still inside—calm, barefoot, and smiling.

This is the story of Juan Tejedor Baron and the brutal murd...

A scenic morning drive to Oahu’s Pali Lookout ends in a bloodied 911 call.

She says her husband—a Maui anesthesiologist—hit her with a rock, tried to push her over the edge, and injected her with something.

He says nothing at all.

This is Part 1 of a two-part investigation into one of Hawaii’s most chilling attempted murder cases.

Listener discretion is advised: this episode contains descriptions of domestic violence and physical assau...

Waikiki was alive that night—fireworks overhead, music on every corner, crowds spilling into the streets.

And then, just like that, Carlos Carrillo was gone.

He was 28. A club promoter. A fixture in Hawaii’s nightlife scene. On July 4th, 2000, he walked out of Evolution Waikiki—and vanished.

No phone call. No bag. No boarding pass. And no sign he ever left the island.

But that night, his fiancée was kidnapped by the same man who last s...

Two teens. A Friday night. A quick stop at the gas station.

They didn’t say where they were going.
But they never made it home.

By morning, the only trace of them was a folded blanket on the sand. Their phones. Their clothes. The car—locked.

And the waves crashing off Ke Iki Beach.

A massive search followed. Helicopters. Divers. Volunteers.
Then came the worst kind of answer:
Joey’s body—found in the ocean.

But Samantha Chun wa...

She got in her car that night to help the father of her child. Not out of love—maybe out of duty. Maybe hope. Maybe just the part of her that still believed people were good.

She was five months pregnant. Her name was Carly Joann Scott—Charli, to everyone who loved her. And she never made it home.

What started as a missing persons case turned into something darker. Her SUV was found burned near the cliffs of Maui. Her dog was still i...

The trail was overgrown. The brush, thick.

On July 3rd, 2010, the body of 57-year-old Amber Jackson was discovered deep in the remote wilderness of Kealia, Kauai—hidden beneath a cover of ferns, face down in the dirt. Ten days earlier, she had vanished without a trace. No signs of forced entry. No clear motive. Just blunt force trauma—and silence.

Amber wasn’t a stranger to standing up. She was a respected voice on Kauai, a union adv...

A dog digging in black sand. A skull just beneath the surface.

On June 1st, 1999, the remains of 22-year-old Matthew Joel Peak were discovered on a remote beach in Waipio Valley, one of Hawaii’s most sacred—and isolated—places. A quiet drifter from San Francisco, Matthew had been living off the grid, hitchhiking between towns, sleeping in a makeshift shack. Weeks earlier, someone had strangled him and buried his body where the valle...

They found her in the cane fields.

Decomposed. Unclothed. Forgotten.

Michelle Anne Bensinger was just 24 when her body was discovered off Thompson Corner near Waialua, Oahu in August 1999 — likely dead for weeks. She was never reported missing. There were no headlines. No public outcry. Just a quiet line in a police log and a case that faded into silence.

But Michelle’s story is more than a cold case.

She may have worked — or even mana...

🩸In August of 1999, the body of a 21-year-old woman was found behind a Honolulu florist shop—naked, bound, and wrapped in trash bags.
Her name was Jubilee Lum. Her family called her Maile. And she wasn’t supposed to be forgotten.

She had asked for help.
She went to the police.
She told people she was scared.
But help never came.

Days later, her body was found in the heat—discarded like waste.
But Maile was not waste.
She was someone’s dau...

In the summer of 1941, just months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a seasoned U.S. Navy officer set out for a simple hike in the Aiea Mountains—and was never seen again.

Commander Thomas C. Latimore wasn’t just any officer.
He was a man of influence.
A former acting Governor of American Samoa.
A Naval Intelligence veteran stationed at Pearl Harbor during one of the most critical moments in history.

And then—without warnin...

There’s a house in Kaimuki that still hums beneath the silence. Hawaii’s most infamous haunted home—where screams pierced the night, furniture moved on its own, and even police felt something they couldn’t explain. This isn’t just a ghost story.

It’s the story of Glen Grant—the folklorist, professor, and late-night radio host who gave Hawaii’s spirits a voice. The man behind The Obake Files and Chicken Skin Tales.

In this special epi...

On a humid October morning in 2013, a woman’s body was found inside a dumpster behind the Hawaiian Colony apartments in Waikiki.

Her name was Janine Ululani Caldeira Meyer.
And she had tried—again and again—to warn us.

This episode unpacks the heartbreaking series of events that led to Janine’s death—and the failures that followed:

• Who Janine was, and the life she built in the heart of Waikiki

• Her repeated efforts to seek help, incl...

On a quiet January afternoon in 1972, nineteen-year-old Nancy Anderson was found brutally murdered in her Waikiki apartment. More than sixty stab wounds. No forced entry. No witnesses. No answers.

For five decades, her case haunted Hawaii.

Until one name finally surfaced.

This episode unravels the tragic timeline—from Nancy’s arrival in paradise to the moment police knocked on the door of a frail man in Nevada with a past he couldn’t ...

In this episode of Beneath the Palms, we uncover the tragic disappearance of Jonathan Fraser—a 23-year-old local kid whose life was quietly erased in the summer of 2016. He wasn’t part of a gang. He didn’t run with the wrong crowd. His only mistake? Surviving a car crash that killed his best friend, Caleb Miske—the son of one of Hawaii's most powerful and feared men.

Jonathan’s story isn’t a mystery. It’s a documented, proven, a...