There’s one nagging bit of the story I laid out in a post here yesterday that continues to bother me.
It’s seemingly a simple “coincidence” in a context where I don’t like to see coincidences.
The accident in which then-HPD Sgt. Albert Lee’s vehicle went off the road and crashed in Hawaii Kai occurred in the early morning hours of November 17, 2016. For much of the previous 12 months, Lee had been feeling the heat from HPD higher ups for triggering the arrest of Honolulu businessman Michael Miske in December 2015, and the accident occurred just hours before he was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury investigating corruption in his department.
Exactly one year earlier, on November 17, 2015, the car in which Jonathan Fraser and Caleb-Jordan Miske-Lee were driving crash into another vehicle at the intersection of Kaneohe Bay Drive and Makalani Street in Kaneohe. Miske-Lee was critically injured, and after a prolonged hospitalization, died on March 12, 2016. And several months after that, on July 30, 2016, Fraser disappeared without a trace.
Miske-Lee’s father, Michael Miske, blamed Fraser for his son’s death, as evidenced by the lawsuit filed on behalf of Miske-Lee’s estate.
Are the November 17 dates of the two accidents a coincidence? Perhaps. But as a reporter, it grates on me.
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Ian, your journalistic courage is commendable.
A mountain of evidence points towards Michael Miske behaving like a true Toni Soprano Hawaiian style “wanna be”. And it appears he is doing a pretty good impersonation when you consider missing persons and late night car “accidents”.
What I have always found noteworthy about criminal figures in Hawaii is the close working relationship in many cases between crime figures and the police.
At the same time, it doesn’t help to be without a full-time city prosecutor. Your take on that?
And where do you think our current Attorney General (whomever that is) stands on these issues?
Please keep digging and keep asking questions.
I understand why the ‘coincidence’ grates on you. The entire ugly mess grates on me and many others. It’s like watching a really bad movie on Netflix, one you can’t seem to close.
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous” is a quotation that has been attributed to famous people from Einstein to Bill Moyers. I don’t know who said it first. It remains to be seen if the irony of November 17th and being buckled in a passenger seat is spiritual. But in this case, I suspect a mere mortal suffering from some sort of madness for complete control and power of intimidation. So, maybe Malcolm Nance is closer, who said, “For an old spy and codebreaker like myself, nothing in the world happens by coincidence.” Both are, in the end, correct. Coincidence just is not a kosher word.
And both accidents involve an alleged driver-passenger switch.
Michael Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch always says “I don’t believe in coincidences. There are only things we haven’t figured out yet.”
Fraser’s mom is here in Hawaii now hoping for answers. Why isn’t this info in the media? This is crazy and surely something underhanded happened to her son.
She is living on Hawaii Island and came to Honolulu yesterday to call attention to her son’s continuing case.
Have you seen the news today?! Mike Miske arrested on 22 counts of murder. CRAZY!!!
I guess you were right. Miske was just arrested today.