Here’s a link to my latest reporting on the case involving Mike Miske, the former owner of Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, along with a slew of other companies, who is now accused of having controlled a criminal organization for two decades, often commingling his business and criminal enterprises (“Updated Indictment In Miske Case Includes New Defendants And Details Of Alleged Murder/The kingpin’s daughter-in-law was named as a defendant, along with a business associate alleged to have bought a large fish bag to dispose of a body at sea“).

I hadn’t planned on spending all of Tuesday pulling a story like this together, but it was raining when we started our daily walk just before dawn. At first, it was just raining, but half way down the block toward Kahala Avenue, a squall hit with gusty wind blowing the rain almost sideways. These usually don’t last long, but this one did last long enough for us to decide to just turn around and walk home to start the day’s pot of coffee. And that’s what we did.

This meant that I suddenly had a little more than an hour of unexpected “free” time. So I decided to “check the traps,” you might say, wandering online through old issues and cases to see if anything worth reporting had changed, if new documents have been filed, etc. Several of those “traps” are cases related to the prosecution of Mike Miske, and Bingo! I was surprised to see that a federal grand jury had dropped a second superseding indictment in his case, adding Delia Fabro-Miske and Jason Yokoyama as defendants. The indictment had been filed under seal on July 15, and just unsealed last Friday, July 30. That happened to be the 5th anniversary of the disappearance and presumed murder of Jonathan Fraser. But that’s getting ahead of this story.

Those two new defendants have been familiar names throughout my reporting on the case. Delia was married to Miske’s son, Caleb, and Jason was a longtime employee and business partner, according to various public records. I didn’t know much about Yokoyama, although I had charted out his business background, and compiled whatever information I could.

So I sat down and wrote a story about the new indictment and its newly named defendants, drawing on my prior reporting to explain how these two fit into the case.

I had finished and submitted a draft of that story minutes before 2pm, just in time for a regularly scheduled Zoom call with a group of college friends and their spouses. Just over an hour later, when the call was done, I checked the case docket again, just to double check on something, and found another legal document had been filed. This turned out to be a prosecution memo spelling out why the government says it is entitled to hold Yokoyama in the federal detention center without bail until trial. This time, a high octane BINGO, as prosecutors recounted Yokoyama’s role in the murder of Jonathan Fraser, with disturbing details.

So I had to contact the editor I was working with at Civil Beat to explain I would have to rewrite my draft to incorporate this startling new information. And I did, finally finishing up the details about 5:40 p.m in time for wine o’clock.

So that’s the back story on today’s piece. Please head over to Civil Beat and check it out. [Note: If you clicked this link earlier and got sent off to a batch of Feline Friday photos, I apologize! I think the link is now fixed]

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