On the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1991, 23-year-old Dana Ireland left her parents’ home in Puna for a bike ride and never returned.
Good Samaritans called 911 after finding her mangled bicycle, a shoe, and clumps of hair ― but no rider.
Thirty minutes later and five miles away, Ireland was found in the bushes of a fishing trail, nude from the waist down and barely conscious. She died at the hospital from blood loss and multiple traumatic injuries.
A decade later, three Hawaii Island men would be convicted for her murder, the shocking details of which reverberated around the entire state. But the story doesn’t end there: An exoneration based in large part on advances in DNA technology turned the Dana Ireland murder into a cold case rather than a solved one.