A Hawaii resident was found dead in his home days after being identified as a suspect in the 1991 murder, rape and kidnapping of a 23-year-old woman, police said.

Dana Ireland was attacked on a fish trail in the Kapoho area of Hawaii Island on Dec. 24, 1991, the Hawaii Police Department said Monday in a news release. She died the next day at the Hilo Medical Center, police added.

“For 33 years, our Department has been resolute in investigating the Dana Ireland case,” Hawaii Police Department Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz said in the release.

Using "evolved" DNA technology, investigators were able to identify 57-year-old Albert Lauro Jr., who lived in the Kapoho area at the time of the murder, as a potential suspect in the case, according to the department. Before police had enough evidence to charge Lauro Jr. for Ireland's murder, he was found dead in his home on July 23 from an apparent suicide, Moszkowicz said, per ABC News and KITV.

"This case is still under investigation. Albert Lauro Jr. has been linked to the victim by DNA; however, his exact involvement is still under investigation. And his death was ruled a suicide by the forensic pathologist," Hawaii Police Department Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins told USA TODAY on Thursday.

Albert "Ian" Schweitzer, who had spent more than 20 years in prison for Ireland's murder, was released a year ago based on new evidence.

How did Hawaii police identify Albert Lauro Jr.?

The Hawaii police's initial investigation involved several pieces of evidence being recovered, including some that contained DNA evidence. DNA was recovered from a swab taken from Ireland's body, from a sheet used to transport Ireland to the hospital and from a t-shirt found at the scene. None of the DNA evidence analyzed at the time matched any DNA in the department's database, but police did learn that it belonged to a male.

The DNA evidence was sent to the Forensic Analytical Crime Lab in California in 2008, where it remains today as part of a cooperative agreement with the Innocence Project, police said.

With the DNA found at the scene, analysts were able to build a family tree based on the known DNA from relatives. Earlier this year, an FBI agent in the Honolulu Field Office shared with police investigators some names of people who could potentially be matches for the DNA found at the scene. One of those names was Lauro Jr.

Once police had a name, officers surveilled Lauro Jr. to gather more evidence. In early July, they collected a utensil Lauro Jr. had been using after he threw it away. The DNA from the utensil was analyzed and matched the unknown male's DNA investigators found at the scene of Ireland's murder.

Albert Lauro Jr. went to the Hawaii Police Department's station for court-ordered cheek swab

Once Lauro Jr.'s DNA matched the DNA found at the murder scene, police asked him to come into the station on July 19 for a court-ordered buccal swab. Lauro Jr. spoke to investigators, did the buccal swab and left.

Police sent the buccal swab to the Forensic Analytical Crime Lab in California, along with a request to rush the analysis and return the results as soon as possible. The swab confirmed that the DNA collected at the crime scene again matched Lauro Jr., police said.

Although police now had probable cause that Lauro Jr. committed the offense of rape, the statute of limitations for that charge ran out several years ago, according to the department.

“The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects individuals from unwarranted search and seizure,” Moszkowicz said in the release. “In order to obtain a search warrant, investigators would have to have established probable cause for the crime of murder and explained specifically what evidence it was seeking.”

Police hope Lauro Jr.'s cell phone will help them, and that family and friends who knew him well will help investigators determine what happened on Christmas Eve in 1991, Moskowicz said at a news conference live streamed from Hilo.

“We remain focused on Dana Ireland, a young woman who was brutally murdered. There is still a lot about this case that we do not know and our investigation into this case continues to push forward. Our search for the truth is not over,” the chief said in the release.

Schweiztzers convicted of Dana Ireland's murder

Frank Pauline Jr., and his brother Ian Schweitzer, were convicted in 2000 for Ireland's murder. Pauline Jr., who was beginning a 10-year prison sentence for sexual assault and theft when he became a suspect in 1994, was killed by another inmate while incarcerated in New Mexico on April 27, 2015.

Shawn Schweitzer, Ian Schweitzer's and Pauline Jr.'s brother, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter and kidnapping of Ireland on April 17, 2000, after he saw juries convict his siblings. He received credit for nearly a year served and five years of probation.

Pauline Jr. was indicted for Ireland’s murder, rape, and kidnapping, on July 30, 1997, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Two months later, on October 9, 1997, Ian, 20 at the time, and Shawn, 16 at the time, were indicted on the same charges.

Although the Hawaii County Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the indictments against Ian and Shawn Schweitzer On Oct. 20, 1998, the brothers were charged again when a man told prosecutors that Ian Schweitzer confessed to him about his involvement in Ireland's murder.

In October 2023, a Hawaii court judge dismissed the cases against Ian and Shawn Schweitzer and reversed their convictions based on new DNA evidence that “clearly exonerates” them, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

 “For me, the hardest part was having to put my brother out of my brain, so I wouldn’t think about him, miss him, or be angry at the world for what happened to us. I had to put him in a closet in the back of my brain so I wouldn’t have breakdowns every day," Shawn Schweitzer told KITV after being exonerated.

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