Ian Schweitzer

The Crime

On Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1991, police in Hawaii County, Hawaii received a report about a badly damaged bicycle on a rural road. Not long after and a few miles away, they found 23-year-old Dana Ireland, severely injured and naked from the waist down, on a fishing trail near the Waa Waa community. Ms. Ireland, a recent college graduate from Virginia who was visiting her sister, died on Christmas Day. 

The Investigation

Investigators collected the bicycle and found one of Ms. Ireland’s shoes, her watch, and a clump of hair. At the fishing trail, they collected more of her clothing, a child’s sneaker and socks, beer bottles, cigarette butts, a pair of men’s underwear, and a t-shirt soaked in what later testing showed was Ms. Ireland’s blood. Police also collected the sheet from the ambulance ride and Ms. Ireland’s remaining clothes.

A reward fund quickly was established, but the case remained unsolved. In the spring of 1994, a local organization called Citizens for Justice asked the Hawaii attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor.

On May 23, 1994, just two months later, John Gonsalves told the authorities that his half-brother, Frank Pauline Jr., had been present when Ms. Ireland was attacked and had information about her death. At the time, Mr. Gonsalves was facing a lengthy prison term for cocaine conspiracy.

Mr. Pauline, who was facing a 10-year prison sentence for sexual assault and theft, was interviewed by police in June 1994. He said he had been present when two brothers, 20-year-old Albert Ian Schweitzer, known as Ian, and 16-year-old Shawn Schweitzer attacked Ms. Ireland. Mr. Pauline said he didn’t take part in the rape, but he said he hit Ms. Ireland on the head with a tire iron. During this interview, Mr. Pauline was unable to give a physical description of Ms. Ireland or recall whether she was riding a bike.

Over the next two years, police interviewed Mr. Pauline at least seven times. None of these were recorded, and his answers were often inconsistent. On July 6, 1996, Mr. Pauline said he had been lying all along and that Mr. Gonsalves had persuaded him to talk to the police in the hope that Mr. Gonsalves’ drug charges would be dismissed.

The police did not find any evidence connecting the Schweitzers to the attack. The brothers denied any involvement and said that their family and Mr. Pauline’s family had feuded for years.

As part of the investigation, police collected dental impressions from the brothers. A forensic odontologist, after initially excluding Ian Schweitzer, later testified that his teeth “were consistent” with what was said to be a bite mark found on Ms. Ireland’s breast.

Police confiscated Ian Schweitzer’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle, which had been purple at the time of the crime. They compared paint scrapings from the car with paint found on the bicycle. They examined hairs found in the car. They found nothing to connect Ian to the crime.

On July 30, 1997, Mr. Pauline was indicted for Ms. Ireland’s murder, rape, and kidnapping. Two months later, on Oct. 9, 1997, Ian and Shawn Schweitzer were indicted on the same charges.

After the indictments, officials submitted several pieces of evidence for DNA testing. These included rape kit swabs, the gurney sheet, the men’s underwear, and the T-shirt, made by a company called Jimmy’z, which was popular with surfers. On Oct. 7, 1998, the testing company reported that sperm was found on the swabs and the gurney sheet and that the Schweitzers and Mr. Pauline had been excluded.

On Oct. 20, 1998, the Hawaii County Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the indictments against the Schweitzer brothers. The dismissal contained conditions that extended the statute of limitations for the rape and kidnapping charges to June 1, 1999. There is no statute of limitations on murder.

On May 5, 1999, a man named Michael Ortiz told prosecutors that Ian had confessed to being involved in Ms. Ireland’s death in August 1998, while Mr. Ortiz and Ian were in the Hawaii Community Correctional Center.

On May 20, 1999, Ian and Shawn Schweitzer were re-indicted on charges of murder, rape, and kidnapping.

Mr. Pauline went to trial in August 1999. Witnesses said he wore a Jimmy’z t-shirt like the one found near Ms. Ireland’s body. Mr. Pauline testified and said that he had created a false story at the behest of his older brother. 

On Oct. 14, 1999, the jury convicted Mr. Pauline of second-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The Trial

On Jan. 24, 2000, Ian went to trial in Hawaii County Circuit Court. The prosecution’s case was similar to the case against Mr. Pauline. There were no witnesses to the crime. The biological evidence collected at the crime scenes and the hospital did not connect Ian to the attack.

Witnesses testified that Ian owned a purple Volkswagen Beetle, that he had been seen with Mr. Pauline that day, that the Beetle was seen damaged in the hours after Ms. Ireland was attacked, and that the injuries to Ms. Ireland and the damage to her bicycle had been caused when Ian rammed her and ran her over as she rode the bicycle.

Alex Franchey testified that he was drinking with Ian, Mr. Pauline, and others near the ocean when Ms. Ireland rode by on her bicycle. Later, Ian drove off in the same direction, Mr. Franchey testified.

Mr. Gonsalves testified that on Dec. 24, 1991, Mr. Pauline got in a fight with his girlfriend and left. When he returned a few hours later with the Schweitzer brothers, there was damage to the front of the Beetle.

It was not clear when Ian began driving the Volkswagen Beetle because it had changed hands several times in the fall and winter of 1991. The title wasn’t transferred to him until Jan. 29, 1992. It was painted yellow in March 1992, which prosecutors suggested was part of a cover-up.

Dr. Charles Reinhold, who performed the autopsy on Ms. Ireland, testified about injuries to Ms. Ireland’s chest. Dr. Reinhold said he found a bite mark on her left breast.

Jeffrey Wheeler, a biomechanics consultant, testified that he examined Ms. Ireland’s bike and concluded that a vehicle struck Ms. Ireland from behind, the bicycle was pushed forward, and she fell backwards against the front of the vehicle. Mr. Wheeler testified that he found no serious injuries from that collision. She had a broken pelvis, which he believed was the result of a more traumatic encounter that took place after she was knocked off the bicycle.

Kenneth Baker, the director of the accident investigation division at Northwestern University’s Traffic Institute, testified that the location of the damage to the bicycle was consistent with being hit by a Beetle, based on the vehicle’s height and the rounded shape of its bumper. He also testified that the presence of grease and oil on Ms. Ireland’s clothes led him to believe that she had been run over.

Prior to trial, James Biven, Ian’s attorney, had retained retired engineer James Campbell, who had concluded that “the injuries suffered by Ms. Ireland and the damage on the bicycle were possibly caused by a rear impact by a small pickup truck made between 1965 and 1975.” However, Mr. Biven did not introduce that report into evidence.

Hawaii County Police Detective Steve Guillermo testified that one of the crime scenes was left unsecured overnight, resulting in the loss of evidence, including tire marks on the side of the road. He also said that several persons told the police that they saw a pickup truck in the area at the time. Mr. Guillermo said that hair samples, paint samples, and grease samples had been taken from the Beetle, but none of them tied the vehicle to the crime.

Mr. Ortiz testified that Ian said that he just meant to scare Ms. Ireland, “but the Volkswagen slid in the gravel and hit the back of her tire and she flew off the bike. And he said…he got scared, stopped, and Frank got out. And Frank grabbed her, started dragging her to the car by her hair.”

Mr. Ortiz claimed that Ian told him that Mr. Pauline dragged Ms. Ireland into the Beetle and during the struggle, she bit him on the arm. Mr. Ortiz said Mr. Pauline then ripped off her clothes and bit her on the breast.

Under cross-examination, Mr. Ortiz testified that he didn’t tell police about the conversation for nearly a year by which time he was in prison in Minnesota. He admitted that his prison term had been reduced, in part because of his cooperation. A prosecution investigator testified that he had performed several favors for Mr. Ortiz, including moving his brother back to Hawaii.

Ian did not testify, but several witnesses testified that there was bad blood between the Schweitzer and Pauline families, making it unlikely that the three of them would have been in a car together.

Lisa Calandro, a scientist with Forensic Analytical in Hayward, California, had been jointly hired by the prosecution and the defense to analyze the DNA evidence to alleviate concern that the testing might consume all of the evidence. Ms. Calandro testified that the Schweitzer brothers and Mr. Pauline were eliminated as contributors to biological evidence on the swabs and the sheet from the ambulance.

Ms. Calandro did not analyze the men’s underwear or the Jimmy’z t-shirt. The underwear did not contain sufficient genetic material, she said. The shirt was too bloodstained to get a reliable result of the DNA of the person who wore it.

On Feb. 16, 2000, the jury convicted Ian of all three counts. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder and received two 20-year sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault, to be served consecutively.

On April 17, 2000, Shawn pled guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping. He was sentenced to one year in jail. As part of his plea, Shawn gave a statement to the police that he was in the back of the Volkswagen when his brother ran over Ms. Ireland. Shawn said Mr. Pauline sexually assaulted Ms. Ireland while Ian stood nearby and Shawn remained in the car.

The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed Ian’s conviction on Jan. 29, 2004.

The Exoneration

By April 2015, the Hawaii Innocence Project, through attorney Brook Hart, was representing Ian Schweitzer. Separately, a group known as Judges for Justice called for an official review of the case and said its own investigation indicated that Ms. Ireland was assaulted and killed by a single attacker.

On April 27, 2015, Mr. Pauline was killed in prison in New Mexico.

On Jan. 16, 2018, Ian filed a motion for a new trial. The motion said that the Jimmy’z t-shirt had been submitted for DNA testing and DNA had been extracted from the sweat and the blood on the shirt. Mr. Pauline and the Schweitzers were eliminated. The profile was consistent with the DNA obtained from the swab and the gurney sheet. In addition, DNA testing had been performed on other items that had not been tested before the trial, and the three men were excluded.

On May 23, 2019, the Hawaii Innocence Project and the Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office agreed to work together to re-investigate the case.

On Jan. 23, 2023, the Hawaii Innocence Project and the Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate Ian’s conviction.

Citing the DNA exclusions, the motion argued that the crime was committed by a single person. The motion also noted over the years, bite mark evidence had been discredited. Dr. Adam Freeman, a past president of the American Society of Forensic Odontology, said in an affidavit that “the injury Dr. Reinhold testified was a bite mark is not actually a bite mark.”

Separately, the motion said that Marvin Smith, a tire tread expert at Ron Smith & Associates, had examined tire tread evidence from the crime scenes that had not been presented at the trial. Mr. Smith said the tread width and the distance between the tires did not match a Volkswagen Beetle, and were more consistent with a truck or a van.

The motion to vacate was accompanied by a joint stipulation of facts saying that Shawn had recanted his confession and said he had pled guilty because of his brother’s lengthy prison sentence. He denied any involvement in Ms. Ireland’s death and was deemed truthful when he denied involvement during a polygraph test.

On Jan. 24, 2023, Judge Peter Kubota vacated Ian’s conviction and dismissed his charges on a motion from prosecutors. On Oct. 23, 2023, Judge Kubota granted Shawn’s motion to vacate his conviction and dismissed his case.