Word: kahahawai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...indignant. Egged on by his wife's mother, Grace Fortescue, a woman of good connections and considerable gentility, the lieutenant decided to speed up the clock of the law. Two Navy enlisted men, Albert Jones and Edward Lord, were "deputized" as his assistants. One of the defendants, Joe Kahahawai, an amateur boxer, was enticed to Mrs. Fortescue's rented home with a phony police summons and shot to death. Mrs. Fortescue, Massie and one of the Navy ratings were caught hauling Kahahawai's body away for disposal...
...Hearst papers promptly dubbed Kahahawai's murder "the honor slaying"; New York Daily News Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson sent Grace Fortescue a cable that summed up the prevailing public sentiment: ADMIRATION AND SYMPATHY. In this highly charged atmosphere, the "honor slayers" faced trial for second-degree murder, confidently hired the great Clarence Darrow to defend them...
Darrow put Lieut. Massie on the stand to testify that he had leveled a loaded pistol at Kahahawai and had then blacked out. A defense psychiatrist explained that, at the moment, the lieutenant was "chemically" insane. To nearly everyone's consternation, the jury found Massie, Mrs. Fortescue and their two helpers guilty of manslaughter. Under territorial law, that gave the judge no option but to sentence them to ten years. But a wave of public outrage had overwhelmed the White House on Massie's behalf. Hawaii's Territorial Governor Lawrence Judd got his orders from President Hoover...
Tommie Massie left the Navy and vanished into civilian respectability-which is where Van Slingerland found one of the lieutenant's "deputies," Albert Jones. According to the author, Jones at last set the record straight on Joe Kahahawai's murder...