Kauaʻi police’s search efforts in question, with daughter still wanting answers about her mother’s death

In October 2021, 54-year-old Joddielynn Taylor was missing for eight days before her body was found by teenagers in bushes near a shopping center parking lot in Koloa, where her car had been located by a community member days earlier.

Now, nearly three years later, her daughter Sasha Kanei is still searching for answers about her mother’s death.

The Kauaʻi Police Department ruled Taylor’s death as a suicide, but Kanei is convinced that officers did not carry out a comprehensive search and closed the case without conducting a proper investigation.

“These guys did a really sloppy job,” said Kanei as she recounted the emotional and graphic details of her mother’s death in a recent interview. “I’m pretty sure this was no suicide. I know for a fact.”

Kanei shared her story following Wednesday’s County Council meeting, during which council members heard public testimony regarding concerns about search and rescue operations on the island following the case of 25-year-old Dylan Wagner, who went missing on Aug. 6.

The meeting was scheduled following community criticism about search operations after the Kauaʻi Police Department called off the search for Wagner after two days, uncovering no leads.

After the police suspended its effort, a team of volunteers held a strategy meeting and the next day were able to locate Wagner in approximately one hour, and roughly 320 feet from the parking lot where his car had been found in the Līhu‘e – Kōloa Forest Reserve in Wailua.

Eight people gave public testimony at the meeting, including the three volunteers credited with locating Wagner — Timothy O’Rourke, Klayton Kubo and Eben Manini.

“This situation needs change. Search and rescue needs change,” Kubo said.

Testifiers suggested changes, including improving training for search and rescue operations, using hunters and community members with local expertise, and better-utilizing technology and GPS tracking to locate missing people.

Kanei, who plans to provide testimony at a future council meeting, said she supports the testifiers’ requests for changes because of her personal experiences with her mother’s case.

Taylor was last seen on security footage at the Big Save supermarket in Koloa on Oct. 7, 2021. An article from The Garden Island at the time states police had reported Taylor missing two days later, on Oct. 9, and that the search was ongoing.

However, Kanei described officers as having put extremely minimal effort into the search. 

In an email response on Friday afternoon, KPD Public Information Officer Tiana Victorino said Chief Todd Raybuck was unavailable to provide a comment.

“Unfortunately, Chief Raybuck is currently out of the office and unavailable for an interview,” she wrote.

Kanei says officers didn’t initially take her mother’s case seriously. She said more than 48 hours after her mother was reported missing, officers told her that her mother was “probably just cruising.”

“I’m like, ‘What the hell? I’m telling you, I know my mother,’” Kanei said of her response to the officers. “She’s not cruising for two days.”

Kanei said she asked the police about posting a photo of her mom’s missing car on Facebook, so people in the community could reach out if they had seen it. But police were not prompt to post the photos, she said.

“Well, I just went ahead and posted it myself, and I tagged the police department, and then I sent it to him,” Kanei said. “I was basically doing his job for him (the detective).”

On Oct. 12, Kanei learned through a Facebook user that her mother’s missing car was parked at the Kukuiʻula shopping center, about five minutes from the Big Save market.

According to Kanei, the active police search began two days later on Oct. 14, when officers arrived in the area with their police dog, King.

“They only did it for 30 minutes, and that was it,” Kanei said. “They shut down the search because the dog couldn’t find her.”

Three days later, on Oct. 17, Taylor’s body was found in the bushes in an area behind the Kukuiʻula shopping center by two 15-year-old boys.

Kanei’s 21-year-old son happened to be in the area when he saw the police activity by the shopping center and realized officers had found his grandmother. 

“Thank goodness that my son was there at that time because I would have never known where she actually was,” she said.

Kanei later went to the scene herself and discovered officers had not blocked off the area as a crime scene.

“You guys just found a decomposed body. She has been missing for over eight days, and you guys don’t block this place off?” she said she told them.

Kanei said the police left behind one of her mother’s shoes and bones from her right hand.

Kanei provided several reasons as to why she believes the case involved foul play rather than a suicide. She said there was a knife nearby with blood on it, and blood in the trunk of her mother’s car.

According to Kanei, a witness also reported that her mother’s car was moved and then brought back to the scene. She also claimed that no fingerprints were found in the car, not even her mother’s.

“My mom does not leave her car this clean. That was a red flag … Somebody cleaned this car out,” Kanei said.

Kanei also said that the branch, which police said Taylor had hung herself from, was shorter than her mother’s height. There was also no rope on the branch itself, but there was a small rope found at the scene under her body, according to Kanei.

A toxicology report later revealed Taylor had 1,000 mg of methamphetamine in her system, an extremely lethal dose. Kanei mentioned her mom smoked marijuana but did not do hard drugs. She later suggested that her mother may have been drugged by someone else and then placed in the bushes.

Kanei said her mother was “really happy” at the time and was excited about the birth of her first great-grandchild later that week.

“They (the police) told me, you just gotta accept what your mom did,” she said. “I said, ‘No. I’m not going to accept … because that is not what she did’.”  

Kanei believes if officers had acted faster and done a better search and investigation, they would have been able to determine exactly what had happened.

Kanei noted that in the early days of the search, she had asked KPD Officer Hanson Hsu about using her mother’s phone GPS data to determine her location.

However, Kanei says Hsu told her police don’t have the authority to access that information themselves and told Kanei to call Verizon directly.

When Kanei subsequently called Verizon, she was told that the police would need to contact them and subpoena the location: “I straight told him, Detective Hsu. I called Verizon. They said they cannot give me any information. You guys have to call them. They will give you guys the information because you guys are the officers.”

Kanei said the KPD detectives did not get a subpoena or request the phone information until after her mother was found dead.

“Can you believe that damn detective told me that my mom was gonna come back?” she said. “This whole time, they didn’t take it seriously.”

Kanei plans to continue investigating her mother’s death. She has been collecting and keeping evidence and hopes to work with a lawyer to explore possible negligence in how the case was handled.

Kanei also plans to speak about her experience at an upcoming council meeting set to discuss search and rescue operations on Oct. 2.

The meeting will be attended by the chiefs of the Kauaʻi Police Department, Kauaʻi Fire Department and Kauaʻi Search and Rescue team. The organizations have been requested by the council members to provide an overview of their procedures, roles and responsibilities, and discuss collaborative work between first responders and volunteers.

Kanei hopes sharing her experience will help create changes in how searches and investigations are handled on the island.

“I really want to give my opinion, because it’s wrong,” she said. “Yeah, just wrong on every level.”