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Two brothers exonerated in the 1991 murder of Dana Ireland on the Big Island are suing Hawai’i County and members of the Hawai’i County Police Department, accusing officers of suppressing and fabricating evidence while investigating the case.

Albert Ian Schweitzer, 53, and Shawn Schweitzer, 49, whose convictions were overturned in 2023, say police officials framed them for the rape and murder of Ireland, a 23-year-old woman who was struck by a car, sexually assaulted and left for dead on a Puna fishing trail.

The Schweitzers argue that police officials, desperate to make an arrest in the high-profile case, followed unreliable tips and coerced jailhouse informants to provide false statements to implicate them. 

New DNA analysis in 2023 revealed a man named Albert Lauro Jr. was the sole source of semen found on Ireland’s body. The Schweitzers accuse police of further mishandling their case by failing to arrest Lauro after bringing him in for questioning in July. Lauro killed himself days after speaking with detectives.

The Schweitzers are accusing the county of malicious prosecution, conspiracy and infliction of severe emotional distress, among other counts, and are seeking an unspecified amount of damages. This lawsuit is separate from their claim for compensation from the state for the years they spent wrongfully incarcerated.

“Ian and Shawn’s lives were turned upside down without any warning,” lawyers for the brothers wrote in a complaint filed late Tuesday. “For decades, they lived with the stigma and injustice of being branded as rapists and killers — perpetrators of one of the most notorious crimes in modern Hawai’i history.”

Although the Schweitzers’ convictions were overturned, the cases were dismissed without prejudice, meaning charges could be refiled. Prosecutors have not ruled that out.

Denise Laitinen, spokeswoman for the Hawai’i County Police Department, said in a statement that the department has not yet been served a copy of the lawsuit, but it plans to fully cooperate with the court and defend itself against the claims.

“As this matter is currently in litigation, we will not be providing any further comments at this time,” she wrote. The �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� County Mayor’s office and corporation counsel, the county’s legal advisor, did not respond Wednesday to interview requests from Civil Beat.

‘Botched’ Investigation

In 1994, nearly three-and-a-half years after Ireland’s murder, police received a tip from a man named John Gonsalves that said his half-brother, Frank Pauline, witnessed the attack on Ireland, according to the complaint.

Gonsalves was facing decades in prison on drug charges and Pauline was in his third month of a 10-year sentence on an unrelated offense.

Detectives, who had questioned Pauline a year prior, interviewed him again. During the second round, Pauline gave numerous statements with inconsistent accounts of what happened to Ireland, the complaint says.

Detectives prompted him to change his statements to implicate the Schweitzers, the complaint says, and offered him benefits in return, including being able to receive additional phone call, special visits, and preferred housing while in prison.

When Pauline told police he and the Schweitzers hit Ireland with a borrowed truck, detectives “manipulated” him into saying that the vehicle was actually Albert Ian Schweitzer’s Volkswagen Beetle, according to the complaint, which also accuses police of writing fake police reports to make Pauline’s statements appear legitimate.

But Pauline later recanted his statements, so investigators “doubled down” and sought out other jailhouse informants to provide false statements that implicated the Schweitzer brothers and Pauline. Detectives told one man, Michael Ortiz, to testify that Albert Ian Schweitzer confessed to him while both were being held at the Hawai’i Community Correctional Center, according to the complaint.

Four other jailhouse informants were coerced into making statements that Albert Ian or Shawn Schweitzer confessed to them about having a role in Ireland’s rape and murder, the complaint says.

“Defendants knowingly manufactured these fabricated statements, and they incentivized these witnesses to adopt the statements by promising to provide the informants with benefits — including reduced jail time — in exchange for implicating Ian and Shawn,” the complaint says.

Albert Ian was convicted of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in February 2000 and Shawn pleaded guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping in May of that year. A judge ordered Albert Ian Schweitzer‘s release from prison in January 2023. Shawn Schweitzer’s conviction was overturned in October of that year. He said he had given a false confession to police to get a plea deal and avoid prison time.

Pauline was also later convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping in the Ireland killing, but he was killed in a New Mexico prison in 2015 before he could be exonerated.

Continued ‘Failures’ By Police

The Schweitzers’ convictions were overturned thanks to DNA analysis proving that a bloody T-shirt found at the scene of Ireland’s attack did not belong to either of the brothers or Pauline. The source of that DNA, as well as the semen found on Ireland’s body, was still unknown until a private investigation and software company hired by the Innocence Project identified the man in February 2024 as Albert Lauro.

But even after confirming Lauro’s identity using a DNA sample gleaned from a discarded fork, police did not arrest him. Hawai’i island police Chief Ben Moszkowicz said at the time that police lacked probable cause to arrest Lauro for Ireland’s murder.

County prosecutors have continued to say that despite the new evidence, they believe the Schweitzer brothers could still have been involved in Ireland’s murder.

The police department has also refused to give the Schweitzers’ lawyers documents and records detailing its investigation into Lauro.

“Rather than conducting an honest investigation — and closing the case — (police) continue to spin outrageous theories premised on the false notion that (the Schweitzers) were somehow involved when no reasonable person would believe they are,” the complaint says.

One of the Schweitzers’ attorneys, David Owens, of Chicago-based law firm Loevy and Loevy, said in a written statement that investigators failed his clients and everyone involved in the case by not conducting a fair and thorough investigation.

“They failed the people of Hawai’i, by letting a killer and rapist go free for 33 years,” the statement said. “They failed Dana Ireland and her family, by denying them justice, and by failing to apprehend the real killer, who has now ended his life. These failures were egregious and tragic.”

During his 25 years in prison, Albert Ian Schweitzer missed out on the lives of his friends and family members and was released into a world that had completely changed, the complaint says.

In an interview in November at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa, Shawn Schweitzer said he remembers when photos of himself and his brother were plastered across hundreds of newspaper front pages all across the county.

Even with the new information exonerating them, he said it’s been a struggle to recover their reputation in the community.

Albert Ian Schweitzer said in November he’s grateful every day to be free, but he’s still frustrated that he lost so much time. He’s even more frustrated by the fact that it’s been so hard to get compensation from the state.

“The state and county give me nothing, absolutely nothing,” he said. “That’s what it is. I didn’t even get a sorry yet.”

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