Hello, fellow true crime enthusiasts. Welcome back to Always Time for True Crime, a podcast hosted by Me Julia, in which I try to focus on lesser known cases of murder, missing persons, and serial killers. Today, I'm going to be telling you about an unsolved disappearance and very possibly a murder. In nineteen eighty five, a nineteen year old journalism student failed to meet her friends after teaching a dance class in Honolulu, Hawaii. While there's a lot of evidence to suggest foul play, police have never been able to formally charge a suspect, and the body of Diane Sazuki has never been found. This is a story of Diane Suzuki. In the summer of nineteen eighty five, Dianne joys Zuki life was right on track, ready to start her second year of studying journalism at the University of Hawaii and Manoah. The nineteen year old also cut the part time job teaching dance at the Rosalie Woodson Dancing Academy. She was a very talented dancer, having represented her high school in a jazz competition and often participating in the academy shows herself. Her loved ones say that It was absolutely enchanting to see her dance. She was a natural on stage. You wouldn't be able to take your eyes off of her. When Diane started at the University of Hawaii, she auditioned for the Rainbow Warrior Dancers team, who dance at all the university football games. They were amazed by her abilities. Richard Lum, the director of the university band at that time, said in his eight years of working there, she was the best he had seen, even with her enormous talent. Though you couldn't be jealous of Diane, she didn't have that attitude. She was so friendly and outgoing that it was impossible not to be happy for her. She was popular with everyone she met. Her students loved her. She had a lot of friends from dance, high school, and recently university too. Her childhood best friend, Yvonne recalled that Diane was always happy, but she had such personality. I always wanted to be like her. She had so much talent in dancing. She was so bright, intelligent, smart. She had a lot of friends. Everybody thought good things of her and Dianne was the youngest of five daughters and grew up in the Aia area. On the island of Oahu, just fifteen minutes from the capital city of Honolulu. It's actually really close to Pearl Harbor, which was the famous naval base that was attacked by the Japanese in World War Two. And just full transparency here, I will be pronouncing it as aa. I know there's a huge debate on how to properly say it. I've heard some people say ayaya and even some people who say I eya. I watched a bunch of videos of native Hawaiian's pronouncing it, though, and even in the comments, you'll people saying what's right and what's wrong, some people who even live and I don't know. So if it don't pronounce it in the exact same way that you do, I am sorry. Please feel for you to educate me, but just know that I did look into it, and I'm trying to be correct, so as I said. She grew up in Naia, but was very active in her community. She was the president of the Young Buddhist Association, and just when year earlier, in nineteen eighty four, she was the runner up in the Junior mispageant. She wore her mother's wedding dress as her gown. Investigative journalist and author Robbie Dingman said on the podcast What School We Went by PBS Hawaii that Diane was someone that everyone knew, if not personally, then by association. It was like saying like Diane was my cousin's friend, or my friend went to school with Diane's sister. You know, three degrees of separation. And that's one of the reasons Dingman believes that this case struck so many people. There's over a million people on the island of Oaho, yet it still feels like every single one of them had some kind of connection to Diane's zuki. But let's get into what happened that day in the summer of nineteen eighty five, on July sixth, nineteen eighty five, Diane had a very busy schedule, including teaching a few dance classes. After her first class at ten am, she returned home to get things ready for her evening plans. She and a friend were going to a Dance Academy party up in Turtle Bay that evening, and they were going to leave after Diane finished her two PM class For the party. Diane had agreed to bring some appetizers, so she had come home after her first class to prepare those and just pack everything that they would need for the party. Then when she was done teaching for the day, she and her friend would swing back to the house, grab all that stuff, and be on their way. Turtle Bays on the other side of the island, so it's about an hour drive, and so the girls were going to sleep over in a hotel that night and then drive back to AAA the next morning. It was kind of like a night away for our old a dance teachers, so everyone was going with everything organized. Diane say goodbye to her mom and drove back to the Dance Academy. At two pm, she began teaching another class. An hour later, Diane's friend showed up. She was just fifteen but was working as an assistant at the academy. She too was going to go to the party and had planned to get a ride with Diane. The friend, who isn't named, arrived a bit early, so she stood in the back of the room and watched Diane teach for a few minutes. With five minutes left in the class, the friend went downstairs to the office to grab a free things and then chatted with a friend on the phone for about ten minutes. Then at three ten, she returned to Diane's classroom, but it was empty. She knew the kids had been let out, but where was Diane. Her gym bag was there, as well as her purse, her outdoor shoes, and a pair of jazz slippers, so she really hadn't gone far. Her friend assumed that she had gone to the washroom or something and waited for a few but as minutes passed, was still no sign to Diane. Her friend began to wonder if maybe she left already and went to check the parking lot. She saw Diane's car still there. The friend hung around the studio for close to an hour before then going to the office and asking the secretary to call Diane's parents. They asked mister and Mississusuki if their daughter had arrived home. Maybe she had walked or maybe had a change of plans, but they said no, she wasn't there. Worried, her parents agreed to drive over to the dance studio themselves and help look for Diane. After they two searched the dance studio and still had no idea where their daughter had gone, Diane's parents called the Honolulu police department to report her missing. Unfortunately, though police didn't really take this seriously. Now I do get it. On the one hand, to their defense, a nineteen year old woman has been quote unquote missing for two hours. You can't really be investigating every person who's been missing for two hours because nine nine point nine percent of those times that person is going to show up and say, oops, I forgot to tell you I went to my friend's house or I got a ride with someone else. So that's what police were really thinking was going to be the case with Diane. She must have simply forgotten to tell her friends that she had had a change of plans. But to her friends and family, it was clear that this was not what happened. Like I said, her purse was there, her car was there, and on top of that, she had promised to drive the other instructor up to Turtle Bay with her after class. Not only would she have not left her stuff behind, but above all, else she wouldn't have left her friend there waiting high and dry without updating her unchange of plans if there had been one. Robbie Dingman, the investigative reporter that I mentioned before, agrees that the police did drop the ball in the beginning, and that's in spite of the fact that she was a personal connection to the police department, while they weren't together at the time of Diane's disappearance. Dingman later married the homicide Lieutenant Gary Diaz, and she acknowledges that the team really mismanaged the entire case at first. However, police did go over to the dance studio that day to check things out. When they arrived, they took statements from Diane's family, her friends, and a few fellow instructors. One guy who they had talked to was a photographer who worked in the building. See, the dance studio just rented a few rooms, so they didn't own the whole thing. So other businesses operated in the same building, including the photographer Dewey. His full name has been published, but there are also some papers that don't say his name at all. So, because this man has never been charged with anything and he has a right to privacy, I'm just going to stick to the first name, Dewey. Dewey worked on the second floor, a few doors down from where Diane had been teaching that day. He told investigators that he had seen her right after class and had actually asked her for some help moving some photography equipment. Diane helped him for about five minutes and then went on her way, and all that seemed fine, but police noticed something while chatting with Dewey. Blood. Not a lot, but there was a little bit of blood on his hand. When they asked him about it, Dewey told him that he had cut himself with his scissors. Actually, he said that he had fallen on to his scissors. Now, in police's minds, this wasn't a missing person's case yet, they really didn't think that any foul play was involved. So unfortunately, Dewey's hands were never swab to determine if that blood was his or not. While the reports say that he had blood in his hands and that he had cut himself, there's no report on whether or not police actually saw a cut on his hand because at that time to them it didn't seem relevant. And don't get me wrong, I am mad too. That seems like a pretty big fuck up not to investigate that blood further. After talking with Dewey, investigators moved on to others in the building. Multiple people told detectives as they had seen Diane outside in the parking lot around three or five PM, since her class ended at three and then Dewey says that she helped him for about five minutes. It's assumed that this sighting would have been a that so she was spotted, but she wasn't by her own car. According to these witnesses, Diane was chatting with a man in his vehicle. He leaned out the driver's side window while she stood beside the car. The car was described as a two toned Volkswagen Bug in which the two colors were separated diagonally. The witnesses also described the color, but police didn't reveal what color it was because they wanted that just to be something that only they knew. Plus, they said that the driver could easily just paint one of the colors and then that would skew the investigation, so they didn't want people to be only looking for those specific colors anyway. The driver was also described as in his twenties, slim to medium build, between five five and five ten, one hundred and fifty two one hundred and seventy pounds. He had a tan complexion, one gold earring in his left ear, and his hair was black. Described as long on the back and in a quote unquote punk style. There are sketches of both the man and the car, so I'll post those on my website and my social media if you want to check them out. It didn't seem like there was anything sinister going on with this man, but police definitely wanted to talk to him and see who he was and if Diane had mentioned where she was going, maybe if she was scared of somebody, you know, etc. Even after printing the sketch and the description in the papers, though this man never came forward. Diane taught little kids, so I was thinking that this simply could have just been like a parent of one of her students. But it's strange that this man never came forward, and police made it very clear too that he wasn't a suspect. They just wanted to talk to him. We're gonna take a quick at break and we'll be back in a minute. The day that Diane disappeared, police did not search the building or even the dance studio that she was teaching in, again another huge mistake. They told the Suzuki's that she'd probably just turned up tomorrow. Maybe she had gone to her friend's house. When the family pointed out that she had left all of her things behind. The police then suggested that maybe she had run away. She was an adult who was allowed to leave on her own accord, but Diane's parents knew that this wasn't the case either. Diane had everything going for her and exciting things coming up in the near future because of her enormous talent. She had been rewarded tickets to see an upcoming ballet's show. It was a big deal, hard to get tickets for, but there was this program called Friends of Ballet that gave tickets to promising young dancers, and that year Diane had been selected. In addition to that, Diane had booked a four week trip to the Mainland to look at dance schools. She was going to leave just days after her disappearance. These were two things that her family knew she would not have missed. The next day was still no sign of Diane. Her father and her sister went back to the dance studio to look around. While searching the second floor, they noted that the bathroom dora lock was broken, almost like someone had gotten in by force. An Affidavid Ride quote noted damages to the bathroom door frame, door jam, and gouges on the wall near the toilet that these damages possibly indicate a forced entry into the bathroom and some type of struggle occurring. But this next part is crazier. Diane's family also reported finding a dark stain in the bathroom. Very small, they said, but what they thought might have been blood. They reported to the police, who told the family that they would look into it, but it's not like they exactly dropped everything to do so. On July eighth, two days after Diane vanished, they finally got serious. Investigators brought in Dewey for more questioning, and because he had blood on him that day and he had admitted to seeing Diane just minutes before she's believed who disappeared, they requested that he take a polygraph test, which he agreed to. It was later reported that he failed that test. Some of the questions he was asked included do you know how Diane disappeared? Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of Diane? Do you know where Diane is right now? When confronted with the results of the tests, the detective who administered the polygraph said that Dewey's quote personality resorted to that of a child. All he could do was cover his face and repeat in a high tone of voice that he didn't know what happened to her. Police couldn't just arrest Dewey for a failed polygraph, though, however, they were getting a bit suspicious. That same day, they decided to revisit the dance studio with a more thorough search. Detectives found two more blood stains, one on the second floor hallway carpet and one on a plastic bag in the bathroom trash can. Both stains were later determined to be blood. The investigation finally kicked into high year in the word began to spread that Dewey was being looked into as a possible person of interest. Many friends and colleagues of Diane said that everyone knew that Dewey had a crush on her, and while she was always nice about it, Diane didn't share the same feelings. When missus Suzuki found out about the new person of interest, she remembered something that only now unsettled her. She explained how, on the day that Diane went missing, she and her husband had gone down to the studio and sat in their car for a bit, hoping that Diane would just show back up. While waiting in the car, Missus Suzuki said that she saw Dewey and two other people carrying a very large trunk out of the building. She didn't think of anything of it at the time, but now that she knew he was being investigated, it didn't sit right with her. Now, before we all freak out, let's remember that Dewey is a photographer. They do typically have a lot of big, heavy equipment, and he even said that day that Diane was helping a move some stuff, So this isn't ness necessarily thinister. After looking into this, police learned that the people helping Dewey move that equipment were his father and his sister, and this cousted even more chatter among the community because Dewey's sister worked part time as an instructor at that dance studio, so people were wondering if Diane's body had been in that trunk, which was the rumor that was now going around, would the sister really participate in that? Would you really help cover up the murder of your colleague, maybe even dare say a friend. Again, though this idea that Diane's body was in the trunk is complete conjecture. Police were able to get a search warrant for Dewey's father's vehicle as well as the family home. Unfortunately, this trunk that missus Suzuki supposedly saw was never found, but the search wasn't totally in vain. In the home, police recovered a plastic bag full of detergent silk rags like cleaning rags. Among these rags was a shirt the reddish brown stain on it. It was turned over to the lab where that stain was determined to be blood. Now it's looking like Dewey is a good suspect, but police were unable to find any trace of Diane inside the house when they searched it in July of nineteen eighty five. No body, no clothes that were hers, no murder weapon, and they weren't able to match that blood to Diane, which I'll get into in a few minutes, but a quick note of something that I kind of found strange. So, because there's no body or murder weapon or anything to suggest murder, the homicide team was not on this case. It's fine, fair enough. Instead, though, because police were now beginning to believe that she had been abducted from the studio. The sex crime unit was in charge. They did have two officers from the Missing Persons unit assisting the investigation, but ultimately it was given to sex crimes. I don't really understand why the persons unit wasn't given full control, because I'm now questioning whether and I don't mean to insult anybody's abilities, but I'm now questioning whether a sex crimes unit would be able to fully execute a search of a suspect's home in the same capability that a missing persons or a homicide detective would be able to. It's just a thought. With nothing more to connect Diane to the suspect, and with Dewey and his family quickly laurering up, police found themselves at a standstill. But while they were pulling back, the Suzuki family was doing everything they could. They organized search parties of up to a thousand people. Entire local companies gave their employees the day off to eight in the search. Military groups volunteered, and hundreds of people called police to report sightings of two toned Volkswagen bugs. Diane's sister also printed up fifteen thousand posters featuring a picture of Diane and a description. She was four to eleven ninety eight pounds, petite build, with curly, black shoulder length hair. She was last seen wearing a black leotard with black tights, a white blouse that tied at the waist, and white sneakers. A five thousand dollars award was also included. The Suzuki family felt as though detectives hadn't really done all they could at the studio. After all, they didn't really come to search until after the family had notified them that they had found a bloodstain, so they felt that this was up to them. Around the same time that the police were searching Dewey's parents house, Mister and Missus Suzuki hired a psychic to come to the dance studio and see if she could give them any clues. Psychic Dale Sheer went to the studio with Diane's family and friends and went to Room three h six, the room in which Diane taught her last class. There, Sheer said that she found Dependant on the ground, no chain, just Dependant with a tiny diamond and a letter D on it. Sheer told the family she felt as though it want to Diane, but none of her sisters or parents could confirm that it did. However, it is reported later that in photos of Diane and the weeks leading up to her disappearance, you can see that she's wearing a necklace with a dependant on it. Psychic. Sheer then said that through hole independant, she could feel that Diane was deceased. Now, I've talked about my position on psychics many times, and it's not that I don't believe. It's just that I think that they do a lot of harm rather than good. So you can put whatever stock you want into this idea that she held the pendant and could feel that Diane was dead. But I'm more focused on is Sheer really did find this pendant? That could mean a few things. One, it means that police missed it. They searched the studio the week before and they didn't find it, So that kind of begs the question if they missed this, what else did they miss? And Two? Did someone pull her necklace off in a struggle? I mentioned that they didn't kind of chain, but maybe the attacker had picked up the chain but couldn't find the pendant. Maybe it rolled into a chair or something and they couldn't see it. So I'm more interested in what this pendant means in the investigative sense, and police were two. Like I said, they kind of suggest that they did a sloppy search. So police wanted to know if the psychic Shear had actually found this pendant at the scene, or perhaps maybe she had planted it there to make herself look good, which if it's the latter, is totally fucked and I really hope that's not the case. Dale Shear was brought in for a polygraph examination and asked about the pendant. She was asked questions like did she find it in room for Yo Six? Did she plant it there? Etc? And she passed. While this psychic felt that Diane was dead, police still had no reason to believe that this was a homicide case, and so the family kept up any hope that they could. But as months passed with no new leads, police began to lay the case. In nineteen eighty five, and more so in nineteen eighty six, a serial killer was hunting young women in Honolulu. The first victim, Vicky Gale Purdy, was murdered in May of nineteen eighty five before Diane went missing, but once Regina Sakamoto and Denise Hughes were killed in the same fashion in January of nineteen eighty six, police deemed the three connected and therefore the majority of police's time was now put on the case of what the media had deemed the Honolulu Strangler. Investigators did explore the theory that Diane could have been a victim of the Honolulu Strangler, but she was eventually ruled out. This killer, who has never been identified, didn't really make any efforts to hide his victim's bodies. He left their bodies in parks or downed embankment, not concealed, and since Diane's body has never been found, they don't believe that she's connected to the others. But because of the serial killer in the increasing number of victims, Diane's case was put on the back burner. Her name was occasionally mentioned in the papers alongside other cases of missing persons or on the anniversary for disappearance, but that was it. Meanwhile, the Suzukis did everything they could to hold onto memories of their daughter and sister. Her room was left entirely as she had left it, her pajamas still laid out at the end of the bed. Every year, on May fourteenth, Diane's birthday, the family would get a chocolate cake and toasted Diane. Her mother, Yurie, for months would refuse to leave the house, worried that Diane may return while she was out. As more time passed, Yurie finally learned to go back out into the world, but only on the condition that someone else stayed home. She would never leave the house empty. Massaharu, Diane's father, always kept the porch let on for his daughter. In a nineteen ninety Honolulu Star article, Massaharu told reporters that sometimes at night, if he ever heard a noise coming from the yard, he would always get up and go check he too, hoping that Diane would magically show back up. Diane's sister, Susan, became an advocate for missing persons, helping to find them and supporting the family through it all. She organized searches and several cases not related to Diane's, saying that she was so overwhelmed by the support that she and her family received after her sister's disappearance that she now feels the need to do the same for others. Finally, on the five year anniversary of Diane's disappearance, police took another look into the case. It was probably a mixture of things that made them do so, including the Suzuki family doing a big interview in the news, but also they had heard about this new technology called luminol testing. Luminol, the chemical that reacts with iron to detect blood, had previously been used at crime scenes in North America in the past few years, but it hadn't reached the Hawaiian Islands until just now. Investigators on the Diane Suzuki case got the idea to use luminol in the dance studio, primarily in the second floor bathroom because remember, they had found one speck of blood there. The day after Diana disappeared. Investigators requested search warrants for both the building in which the dance studio was and also for Dewey's home. They felt that they might have missed something in the original search and they wanted to check again. But just as they were applying for these warrants, they were hit with some devastating news. First off, their requested search Dewey's house was denied. They had already searched it five years ago, and there wasn't any new evidence that should let them search it again, So that was frustrating. But even worse than that was police were informed at the second floor bathroom in the dance studio had been retiled since nineteen eighty five. They missed their chance, or did they. We're gonna take one more ad break and we'll be back in just a minute. With nothing to lose, they continued on with their requests for the studio, and fortunately they were granted that one. The thought was that if Diana had blood in that bathroom, losing enough blood to kill her, then maybe there were trace amounts left, maybe some head seep through the tile floor. Police also understood that they kind of had shipped the bed in the original investigation, so they kind of owed it to the Suzuki family to give it all they had. In November of nineteen ninety, police tore up the new tile in the bathroom and sprayed lumino all over the base floor. When they turned up the lights, a checkerboard pattern glowed on the floor. Blood had clearly seeped through all the cracks of the previous tile that was there, and I couldn't find any reports that say how large the area was, but they do say that it was a large quantity of blood, and with this discovery, they were prepared to switch Diane Suzuki's case from a missing person's to a homicide. Now, of course, here comes the hard part, which I briefly mentioned already. Proving that this was indeed Dianne blood, detectives couldn't find any medical records that noted her blood type, and as not as easy as just looking at her parents. I'm not sure what Uri and Massahara's blood types were, but let's say one was A, one was B. That means that Diane could have had blood type A, B, A B, or O. She could be any I mean, that's the most extreme scenario, but I'm just saying you can't necessarily determine the blood type just through knowing the parents type. So not having Diane's DNA can compare it to was difficult enough, but a lot of the time more so in present day, they can use samples from the parents to compare it to the crime scene. They wouldn't be able to match it to Diane, but they could say that the blood came from a child of Uri and Massaharu, so that would be pretty good problem with that too, though I'm not a scientist, so I'm going to break this down in an easy way that I can understand. There are two types of DNA in our bodies, nuclear and mitochondrial. Nuclear DNA comes from both the father and the mother. Both kinds are used to help identify victims of times in present day. According to the International Journal of Legal Medicine, nuclear DNA is usually preferred because it's more accurate than mitochondrial, but nuclear DNA is also very fragile and the sample isn't always usable due to contamination or degradation. If that were the case, they would then use mitochondrial DNA to make a comparison, But unfortunately, in the late eighties and early nineties, midochondrial DNA wasn't widely used as a source of identification. I think I've read that it first started being used in forensic cases in the early nineties, but this would have been in the best of the best labs, just like we saw with luminal testing. Forensic technology was a bit slow to reach the Hawaiian Islands, so at the time of Diane's case, all it could use was nuclear DNA, and because the blood had been left there for five years. It was under tiles in the bathroom, so the sample is probably contaminated with mold and other bacterias. So when investigators sent or samples to the lab, they were told that they wouldn't be able to get a profile from it. So now not only do they not have Diane's blood type, but they don't even have a profile from the blood that they could use to compare to her parents. Either way, it was still enough for a judge to rethink that warrant for Dewey's home. Remember, a few months earlier, they had asked for one, but they were denied. After finding the blood, however, they were given permission to search Dewey's family property. When they first searched it back in nineteen eighty five, they were still treating the case as a missing person and the majority of officers on the case were from the sex crimes unit. Now they had not only deemed it a murder, but they also had more experienced people on the team. Lieutenant Gary Diaz, who I mentioned earlier, was the husband of the reporter Robbie Dingman, led the search in the summer of nineteen ninety one. In the book, Honolulu Homicide, Murder and Mayhem and Paradise, written by Diaz and Dingman. Diaz recalls quote detectives, SWAT officers, Army and apologists, and members of the US Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii were part of the search. But even with an impressive team, he understood the odds against them. It had been six years. If there was some evidence in that house to link Dewey to Diane, it wasn't just going to be sitting out on the kitchen table. They'd really have to dig deep, which is what they did. Literally, Diaz ordered a search not only of the home, but of the entire property. See what I didn't mention before is that behind the home, Dewey's father had a pig farm, and all around that were marshes. The team began conducting lining grid searches, going over every square foot of that land. By total luck and coincidence, Gary said that one of the officers was just mucking around in the marshes and for whatever reason, kicked over a stump from a dead banana tree. Underneath the stump, he thought he saw something, so he dug a bit, and his surprise, he found some clothing it was a pair of black tights and what police only described as a hair accessory, so maybe a scrunchy or a clip or something. Remember, though Diane was last seen wearing a black leotard and black tights. Her family also says that she put her hair up whenever she taught her classes. That whole area was dug up, but no more clothes were found. The search continued on, and as they went deeper into the marsh, police were stopped by a hand made wall, like a garden wall, maybe a brick or limestone, a few feet high. Not a big deal. They could go round it, but they did notice something strange. A small portion of the wall, approximately four feet of it, appeared to be new. Most of the stone looked as if it had been there for years, stained dark brown, but then there was one section in which the stone was a light blue color. According to police, were port When they asked Dewey's father about it, he became very nervous and said that the wall had always been like that for years, even decades, he said. Anthropologist dug all around the wall, knowing that the soil was quite loosely packed a tad suspicious. A sample of the soil surrounding the wall was taken and tested. By testing the minerals and the pH of the surrounding soil, the lab could figure out how long that portion of the wall had been there. A few weeks later, the results came back. The lab estimated that that soil had been disturbed by the new brick approximately six to nine months earlier. Reporter Dingman noted that it was about nine months prior that they had originally applied for a warrant and had been denied. They only got the warrant after applying a second time, So is it just a coincidence that that area was disturbed around the same time police applied for their first warrant. The team of Army anthropologists suggested that there might have been a grave there that had been recently moved. The US Army identification anthropologist Kim Schneider, who was there at the scene, told the Honolulu Advisor that the soil can give them clues about a burial. Quote. When someone digs a hole, layers of dirt and grass get mixed up in the piled up soil. When that dirt is put back in the hole, it can't match the adjacent soil. You can never bury something without its showing, because you can never put soil back as you found it. This evidence found at Dewey's home was great, but still circumstantial, and let me tell you why. Just like the blood, it couldn't be more than that. So first off, the soil sample indicated it was new, yes, but I didn't read any indication that it was tested for presence of decomposition. Maybe this technology wasn't available back then, but I know that in present day they could test the chemical compounds of the soil for signs of human decomposition. But I don't believe they did that, so there's no proof that there was ever a body there. Second is the tights and the hairclip. They were showed to Diane's family, but nobody could positively identify them as hers. I mean, hey, they're black tights. It's not exactly a one of a kind piece of clothing. Her family did say that it was the kind that she would wear and it was Diane's size, but unfortunately, because the tights had been in the marsh, the lab couldn't get any forensic evidence back to match it to Diane. I also want to say that the police did admit that the marshes behind Dewey's house had a lot of trash in it, like people who clearly use these marshes as a dumping ground. So I suppose you could argue that those tights could have been just something that someone dumb. Now, while all this was circumstantial, it definitely didn't look good one paired with the blood, and Dewey must have thought so too, because it's reported that acted the search of the marshes, Dewey's family's lawyer asked the police prosecutor informally if they'd be willing to work at a deal for manslaughter. This is all through the lawyer, though Dewey didn't confess to anything, and he's never told investigators that he was willing to play guilty or anything like that, but it's interesting that his lawyers would ask for this. However, police were confident that with the massive blood stain in the bathroom, the fact that Dewey was one of the last people to see Diane, that he was seen carrying a large trunk to his car that day, the clothes in his house with a blood stain on them found back in nineteen eighty five, the tights in the marsh and the evidence of the soil being disturbed. With all that, they were confident that they could get more than manslaughter, and so they told Dewey's lawyer that they were not willing to negotiate. We can't possibly know what would have happened if investigators had decided to chat with Dewey's lawyer. You can't play that what if game. And I know that the police really did think that they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately, when police presented the evidence to a judge to get into rest warrant, he said that they didn't have enough to charge Dewey with anything. And here's why. Prepared to be shocked, horrified, disappointed in this world, and angry as hell. The judge said that the blood found in the studio bathroom did not necessarily point a homicide because it could have been menstrual blood since it was a bathroom. Now, like I said before, I don't know how much blood was actually found under the tiles or how big the stain was, but it was enough for police to switch this to a homicide case. As Robbie Dingman said, to suggest that all that blood was simply from women having their periods is incredibly insulting. One, what woman just casually stands in the bathroom bleeding all over the floor. And two, the average woman sheds about two ounces of blood every cycle. If police determined this to be a homicide, by the amount of blood, I'd assume that's at least four pints of blood. You need to lose like forty percent of your blood before it can be fatal, So it must have been a lot of blood on that floor. Two ounces does not even come close to four pints. That's absolutely ridiculous. Like, use your brain. Anyone can put together that something sinister happened in that bathroom. If the judge wanted to say there wasn't enough evidence to charge because we can't prove that it's Diane's blood, I would respect that. I understand it's likely Diane's, but we can't be sure, so fine, But to blame it on menstrual blood is ludicrous. Nothing came of that decision, and the case again stood still until two years later, in nineteen ninety three, the city prosecutor Keith Canneshiro, thought it'd be useful to impanel a grand jury, as a grand jury can subpoena witnesses who will then have to testify under oath to everything they know. Caneshiro said that this was more of an investigative grand jury, meaning they weren't really seeking an indictment, but more so looking for some more evidence that they could build a case against Dewey. Like, yes, an investigative grand jury could still give an indictment against Dewey, but really the main goal here was just to find some more leads to investigate. More than fifty people were called to testify, including Dewey's mother, father, and sister, but in January of nineteen ninety four, the grand jury failed to give an indictment. While Kimashiro said that it did give them some other avenues to explore, it never became enough to get the answers that the Suzuki family deserved. Diane's sister Susan, who spoke on the family's behalf, said that they weren't as concerned with an arrest, but more so with just finding Diane and getting answers. In their Buddhist belief, someone who dies becomes a pure spirit, and then their loved ones hold services together in which everyone helps the person's spirit find enlightenment or nirvana. Their loved ones help guide the spirit on a path. It's a seven step process, Susan explained. Once the spirit reaches the state of enlightenment, they can find peace. But since Diane's body has never been found, the Suzuki family says that they haven't been able to put her spirit to rest. Quoll right now, her spirit is very restless. She's not happy because she has no direction. No one has shown her the way. And so while I'm sure they want justice, they're really just focused on Diane's spirit and their Buddhist beliefs. Everyone should have the right to bury their loved ones, and I'm sure it would bring them some peace, maybe even some closure if they knew that Diane's spirit had reached enlightenment and was finally at rest. Diane's parents have since now passed away, never knowing the truth of what happened to their daughter. As time goes on and new technologies are discovered, Diane's sisters remain hopeful that the case will be solved with new science. I am a hundred percent confident that this case will be solved if police still have samples of the blood or the clothes that they found, if evidence was collected and preserved properly, we could definitely test that blood and compare to Diane's sisters after new DNA advances, most notably in genetic genealogy. The Honolulu Police Department said that they continue to look for untested evidence or evidence that can be retested in unsolved murder cases. While they can't comment on Diane's case as it's still open, they say that they will pursue all leads and try new testing as it becomes available. They're committed to getting justice for the victims and their families no matter how long it takes. Nobody has ever been charged in connection with the disappearance and presume murder of Diane'sazuki. If you have any information about the whereabouts of Diane Sazuki or about her murder, please contact the Honolulu Police Department at eight zero eight five two nine three three nine four or the Honolulu Crime Stoppers at eight zero eight nine five five eight three zero zero. Alternatively, you can also submit a tip online. There are two different submission forms. There's one with the Police Department and then another one with crime Stoppers, And I'll post those links in my show notes with the phone numbers that I set above. Thanks for listening to Always Time for True Crime. I'll be back soon with another episode, but in the meantime, you guys can follow me on social media as usual. Those links will also be found in my show notes. So thanks guys, and I'll be back soon.