Parents accused of 6-year-old girl’s murder weeks after they reported her missing

The adoptive mother and father of a lacking 6-year-old woman had been arrested Wednesday on suspicion of her homicide, practically two months after they informed authorities in Honolulu that she had vanished and an enormous search effort was launched, police mentioned.

The couple, Isaac Kalua, 52, and Lehua Kalua, 43, face fees of second-degree homicide within the killing of Isabella Kalua and had been being held with out bail, Honolulu interim Police Chief Rade Vadic mentioned at a information convention.

Authorities had been looking the Kaluas’ residence Wednesday for proof and Isabella’s physique, which hasn’t been discovered.

“Sadly what started as a seek for a lacking woman was a homicide investigation,” Vadic mentioned.

The couple, who adopted Isabella throughout the final two years, reported her lacking the morning of Sept. 13. The report prompted a search effort wherein lots of of volunteers scour the Waimanalo space of Honolulu, the place the Kaluas’ house is.

A fence surrounding the house was plastered Wednesday with indicators scrawled with determined pleas. “The place is Ariel?” learn one. “The place has she gone,” learn one other.

Authorities imagine a lot of the data supplied by the Kaluas was “false,” mentioned Lt. Deena Thoemmes of the police division’s prison investigation division.

“There have been some issues that weren’t including up for us,” Thoemmes mentioned.

Authorities declined to say what proof prompted police to establish the Kaluas as suspects, nor would they touch upon a possible motive. The division’s commander, Maj. Ben Moskowicz, mentioned investigators imagine Isabella was killed in August, about one month earlier than her mother and father reported her lacking.

Moskowicz attributed the shift in route to the behavioral evaluation unit on the FBI.

“They gave us an perception into this case that I don’t suppose we’d have been capable of give you on our personal,” he mentioned.

An lawyer who has represented the Kaluas did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

In September, the lawyer, William Harrison, informed information shops that the Kaluas had cooperated with authorities, giving a number of statements and permitting investigators to look their home and take safety cameras.

The Kaluas, he added, had been “extraordinarily grieved by the scenario and haven’t given up hope,” he mentioned.