Loni Kai

In the early morning hours of 26 August 2001, Loni Kai was seen walking through the streets of Hillsboro, Oregon. Having gone out earlier that evening, Loni was attempting to hitch a ride back to her home along SW Cornelius Pass Road. Just a few hours later, Loni's body was found in an overgrown field miles away, the victim of a brutal hate crime…

August 2001 almost feels like a relic of a bygone age. If you look at news stories from this month, it feels reminiscent of another age; an era before the war on terror, before the Great Recession, before every little small thing in our lives got so divisive. Of course, that may just me wearing nostalgia blinders and yearning for the innocence of childhood, but the newspapers also display this.

While several things remain the same - Israel and Palestine clashing over territory, Russia trying to maintain an aggressive invasion of a neighboring country, and people refusing to give their children vaccines for any number of misguided reasons - American newspapers from August of 2001 feel like a snapshot into a different age. While a part of me thinks that this is just me wearing rose-colored classes while reading them, I have to admit that it WAS a different age. America changed a lot after 9/11, and has become a lot more aware of its flaws in the decades since... for better or worse.

Yet, despite me feeling like things have changed drastically over the past 21 years, some articles buried in the back pages of these old newspapers remind me that this country isn't THAT different than it was then. While we have made more progress in accepting other cultures and identities as part of "the great American melting pot," many remain left on the fringes... unaccepted by their neighbors, sometimes even their family and friends . Particularly, members of the LGBTQ+ community, who remain disenfranchised and/or villainized by a sizeable fraction of the populace for just being themselves.

The Human Rights Campaign, an organization that has spent 40 years fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, actively tracks fatal violence against the transgender and gender non-conforming community, and has done so for several years now. As of the time of this episode's recording (October 2022), at least 31 members of this community have been shot to death or killed by other means this year alone. Countless others have died in more unclear cases, or have taken their own lives; after all, members of the LGBTQ+ community are often more likely to be the victims of violent crime - including rape, sexual assault, and either aggravated or simple assault - and survivors often suffer long-lasting trauma as a result.

Yet this community of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals is often treated as a boogeyman by many in society for simply daring to be themselves. This is something that sadly hasn't changed much over the past 21 years.

This is the story of Loni Kai.

Loni Kai was born and grew up in the Mariana Islands. While she was born with a male physic, she quickly realized that this wasn't the person she felt like. I don't want to fall into the habit of dead-naming anyone, so I'm going to refrain from giving out her legal name, which she still had at the time of her death, but didn't use in any of her interpersonal relationships. Through the rest of the episode, I will be using the name she chose for herself, Loni Kai, and I'm even going to change any instance of the pronouns "he" to "she" when it comes to applicable quotes. If this is something that bothers you, then this episode might not be for you (and I personally encourage you to find something of more importance to get upset about, but that's beside the point).

Very early in life, Loni would begin to live life as a woman in the South Pacific Island of Saipan, where her gender identity was quickly accepted by those around her. As described by her uncle, Greg Miles, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report:

"It's commonly accepted in the Pacific Islands that there are people who are born with the wrong body. Within the family, certainly, there was no problem. [She] was loved by everybody, especially the children."

In that same article, Miles says that younger family members referred to Loni as "Auntie."

In 1997, Loni moved from the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, to the mainland U.S., spending short stints in both Seattle and Pullman, Washington; areas that I'm very familiar with, having grown up near Seattle and then going to college in Pullman, which is home to Washington State University. After spending brief periods in both of these cities, Loni would then move down to Eugene, Oregon for a bit, before moving up north near Portland.

There, Loni moved to Aloha, a census-designated town in Washington County which is also a suburb on the western outskirts of the Portland metropolitan area (located about 10 miles west of Portland proper). There, she worked at Epson as an assembly and quality control specialist, and was well-liked by those around her, with coworkers describing her as both "docile" and "wonderfully warm."

Martin Nepaial, the husband of Loni's cousin, later told reporters:

"She always made us laugh when we are down."

By August of 2001, Loni was no longer working at Epson, and seems to have been temporarily unemployed. She moved in with some family in the Reedville suburb of Hillsboro, along Southwest Cornelius Pass Road. Sadly, though, not much information about her life during this span has been made public knowledge, with police later having trouble tracking down those that knew Loni well.

However, we do know that on the evening of Saturday, August 25th, Loni left home a little bit before midnight wearing acid-washed designer women's jeans, a gray sweatshirt, white sneakers, and had her long fingernails painted green. Her long, dark hair was tinted red at the time. Since it was August, the weather was relatively warm, but cooled down to the lower 60s or even mid-50s at night.

Whenever she went out, Loni would usually visit some bars along the SW Tualatin Valley Highway. While we don't know whether she did this, we do know that at one point she was spotted at the Golden Fountain Lounge along SW Canyon Road. She seems to have not stayed for very long, though, as she later walked down TV Highway near Murray Boulevard, headed to a 7-Eleven near the Tualatin Valley Highway and Cornelius Pass Road, not too far away from where she lived at the time. Loni was a regular visitor to this 7-Eleven, and was seen on surveillance cameras there talking to a woman at around 2:10 A.M.

The next hour or so remains a mystery, but Loni's path picks up again at approximately 3:30 A.M., along the Tualatin Valley Highway near 141st Avenue. Here, Loni - apparently attempting to hitch a ride - flagged down a pair of police officers driving by, but didn't seem to be in distress. Rather, she just asked for a ride home. However, due to an apparent miscommunication - with Officer Brandon Herring not being able to make out Loni's accent - he and his partner believed that Loni wanted to head to Cornelius, a town approximately ten miles northwest, instead of Cornelius Road, just a short drive away.

Officer Herring reportedly offered to call Loni a cab or someone she knew to come pick her up, but Loni refused, saying that a cab cost too much and she didn't want to bother anyone this early in the morning. So the two Washington County Sheriff's Officers continued on, and were the last known people to see Loni Kai alive in those early morning hours.

A few hours later that same morning - Sunday, August 26th, 2001 - the body of Loni Kai Okaruru was found in an overgrown field nearby, having been savagely beaten. The body was discovered by a 16-year-old girl that was out jogging that morning, approximately 100 yards away from her home in the 27000 block of SW Farmington Road.

This location, approximately four miles south of Hillsboro - far from where Loni had last been seen - was an overgrown field in western Washington County. There, her body had been dumped just inside of the tree line, with Washington County Sheriff's Detective Mike O'Connell later telling reporters with the Oregonian:

"Someone wanted to dump her and get away."

An examination of Loni Kai's body revealed that she had been beaten severely, with the cause of death ruled as blunt force trauma to the head and face; likely with a blunt instrument of some kind, possibly an auto jack or a tire iron. Years later, Detective Mike O'Connell would describe Loni as having been:

"... brutally beaten - with passion..."

Loni's uncle, Greg Miles, would tell reporters with the SPLC's Intelligence Report:

"Fingertips cut off, face smashed in - whoever did it, there certainly was a violent rage."

It appears that whoever had committed this crime had done so with the intent to kill Loni, and then dispose of her body and make her hard to identity. Not only had they brutally beaten her face and head - making it hard to identity the remains - they had then gone through the effort of cutting off some of her fingertips so that investigators wouldn't be able to match up the remains through fingerprint records. They'd even possibly tried to eliminate any trace of themselves left behind.

Because of this, and the evidence available at the scene, investigators realized that Loni had not been killed at the location where her body was found. She had been murdered elsewhere, and then moved to the field afterward; likely sometime between 3:30 and 5:00 AM, shortly after Loni had encountered the two Washington County police officers along the Tualatin Valley Highway. Her body was found approximately nine miles away from that location, and investigators knew there was no way she had gotten anywhere close to there on-foot in the short window when she'd been killed.

Sadly, the killer(s) had not left behind much evidence of themselves, with the crime scene proving free of most traditional clues. If investigators found anything of-note, they've kept it buttoned up for over two decades now.

It didn't appear that either sexual assault or robbery had played a motive in the killing, with investigators and medical examiners being unable to find any sign of sexual activity before Loni's death. Likewise, her body was found with cash still on her person, meaning that the killer(s) had not targeted her for that reason.

Friends and family members of Loni Kai say that despite her gender identity being accepted by them, not everyone was so welcoming of it, especially those that met her while she was living in Oregon. Loved ones told police about two assaults she had received in the Portland area, neither of which she had reported to authorities... believing that doing so wouldn't do much good.

Later, Washington County Sheriff's Detective Mike O'Connell would speculate on the motive for Loni's death to the Intelligence Report, relating her murder to a recent date she'd been on, which resulted in one of these unreported assaults:

"He touched her through her clothes, found out she was a man, and kicked her out of his car right there... I think that is what happened here, but it didn't end quite so nicely."

Almost immediately - in the days after Loni Kai's murder - investigators surmised that someone had picked up Loni along the side of the road, unaware of her gender identity, and then killed her because of it. Speaking to AP reporters in August of 2001, Detective O'Connell expanded:

"Based on the investigation and evidence we have at this point, we believe that [she] was killed because of [her] sexual orientation or gender identification."

A public rally to raise awareness for Loni Kai's murder was scheduled to take place a few weeks later, but the notice for that event was published in the morning edition of the Tuesday, September 11th newspaper... which, as we know, was a devastating day that changed the course of American history. In the weeks to come, almost every other story in the country was overshadowed, and Loni's murder was, sadly, no exception.

A memorial service for Loni was held the month after this, in October, but the story disappeared from the press almost immediately afterward. In the years to come, only a few publications would publish stories about it (namely, the Oregonian, which is why I'm quoting from it so heavily this episode). However, the story was repeatedly told by members of several LGBTQ+ organizations, who kept Loni's story alive and repeatedly called for justice.

Speaking to the Oregonian in 2002, Roey Thorpe, the executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, stated:

"So much prejudice toward (transgendered persons) is acceptable that it dehumanizes it."

In the same article, Lori Buckwalter, the executive director of It's Time, Oregon, said about violence against members of the trans community - Loni in particular:

"It's not a problem that only exists somewhere else, but it exists here every day... I hope people become more aware of Loni's death. We need to bring it up again and remind people. It seems to have evaporated from people's consciousness, and that's tragic."

In 2002, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 21 victims of apparent hate crimes spread out through the U.S. the year prior, 2001. In their findings - which were published in the Intelligence Report - they pointed out that a handful of these victims happened to be or look Arab or Muslim, and were targeted following the 9/11 terror attacks. However, at least 11 identified as either gay or transgender, or were perceived to be, and were targeted for that alone.

In 2003, Basic Rights Oregon introduced S.B.1000 (Senate Bill 1000) in the Oregon state senate, hoping to add gender identity to the state's hate crime laws. In their proposal, they wrote specifically about Loni's case, hoping that adding gender identity to the hate crime laws would allow the case to be given additional attention and funding - either through the state police or even the FBI. However, the bill was killed in committee by Oregon State Speaker Karen Minnis, a member of the Republican Party that also opposed civil unions for same-sex couples when given the chance in 2005.

Because of S.B.1000 failing in the Oregon state senate, Loni's case would remain a "biased-base crime," which means that police would investigate it with the belief that she had been targeted for her gender identity, but the case wouldn't be labeled as a "hate crime."

Sadly, the lack of attention given to Loni's case - due in part to this failure of the Oregon state senate to pass S.B.1000 - not many in the region would become aware of Loni Kai's murder. In fact, those that were aware were oftentimes less than supportive.

In 2009, Detective Mike O'Connell told the Oregonian about someone who called into his office after learning about the case, and questioned why he was wasting so much time on the case. Per Detective O'Connell in the article:

"(The caller) thought we were wasting our time investigating the murder of a transgender person... We never give up on these, and hate crimes are of a particular concern. Fortunately, they're not too common in Washington County, but even one is one too many."

Over the next several years, members of the Washington County Sheriff's Department would occasionally make statements to the press, hoping to reignite interest in the case. Most noteworthy among them was Detective O'Connell, who I've quoted several times in this episode. Sadly, though, despite these attempts, they were unable to make much progress in the case, with the available leads quickly leading to dead-ends.

In 2002, investigators came forward with a tidbit of new information: that two men had been seen at the crime scene near Farmington Road. These two were apparently driving a small to mid-sized SUV, which they turned around on the road before 5:00 AM (less than three hours before Loni's body had been discovered).

A man driving east on Farmington passed by the SUV, which he said was slowly backing up the dirt road, with one man walking toward the vehicle with his arms waving in the air. Detective Roger Mussler of the Washington County Sheriff's Department said that the man "appeared to be upset or agitated" and said that man was walking in the glare of the moving vehicle's headlights, making him visible in the early morning hours.

It was believed that the man walking in front of the vehicle - fully visible to the wandering witness - had been there with someone else. Together, the two were likely disposing of Loni's body at a secondary location, away from where she had been killed. On this, Detective Mike O'Connell stated:

"In light of the facts that there were two or more people and that one is probably less culpable than the other - maybe he was just helping get rid of the body - we hope he comes forward before it's too late."

Speaking to the Oregonian, Detective Roger Mussler expanded upon the investigative team's belief in what had happened:

"Most likely, it was someone who was sexually disappointed to find out Loni wasn't what he thought... Whoever did this was just outraged. It was a blitz attack. Loni didn't seem to fight back; [she] didn't have any broken fingernails."

At one point, investigators received a tip from an inmate who offered to trade information in Loni's case for a shorter sentence, which eventually led investigators to a vehicle that they believed had been used to dump Loni's body. However, this tip turned out to be a dead-end, as the information given to them by the inmate had been a lie from the start.

Despite not having any physical evidence to match up with a suspect, investigators still believe that their original narrative is the correct one: that someone picked up Loni along the highway, and then reacted violently when they discovered her gender identity. This likely happened shortly after two members of the Washington County Sheriff's Department encountered Loni at approximately 3:30 in the morning... just a few hours before her body was found.

Speaking to KPTV in October of 2018, Detective Murray Rau stated:

"It's just such a small window of time, and to not know, have not been able to narrow it down, figure out who was that person who had last had contact with Loni, you know... There's probably someone out there who has some information, has heard something about this case beyond what's been previously reported."

To this day, the murder of Loni Kai is believed to have been the first fatal hate crime in Oregon's Washington County. Her picture and information is displayed on the state's playing cards that are often distributed to local jails and prisons in the hopes of discovering new information. She graces the 5 of Hearts.

Despite that, though, Loni's case remains barely known by even those in northern Oregon, let alone on a national level. Only a handful of meaningful articles have been written about her since her tragic death back in the summer of 2001, and even less can be found online. However, her case continues to be handled by the Washington County Sheriff's Department, who have been investigated her death since the morning of August 26th, 2001.

Authorities currently believe that Loni's killer may have used a medium-sized SUV to transport her body. They also believe that blood from both her and the killer had been left in the car, and that the killer had help from someone else when moving the body.

Speaking to the Oregonian in August of 2006, Detective Mike O'Connell stated:

"Two people know about it, the killer and the person with him. And the odds are, based on human dynamics, other people know about it, too."

He told the same paper in August of 2002, on the one-year anniversary of the crime:

"The dynamics of two people keeping a secret like this forever is in our favor. Mark my words, one of them has spoken to somebody else, and it's that somebody else we need to have come forward."

As of this episode's recording, a $4,000 reward for information leading to the identification of Loni's killer still exists, and can be claimed by anyone who helps police make an arrest in this case. Anyone with information is encouraged to call Washington County's Sheriff's Detectives at (503) 846-2500. You can stay anonymous and still claim the reward, so please don't be afraid. To do so, just call Crime Stoppers of Oregon at (503) 823-4357 or check out their website at the Portland.gov website.

I'd like to end this episode by reading a random editorial I found, of all things. This is only a section of the editorial that was published in The World, a publication from Coos Bay, Oregon, on September 19th, 2001. It was written by John Kurka from Myrtle Point, who, sadly, passed away back in 2009. It reads:

"Recently, a tragic event occurred on or near the Tualatin Highway in Washington County. On Sunday, Aug. 26, of this year, Loni [Kai] was seen on this highway and shortly thereafter, her bludgeoned body was discovered in a field nearby. It is felt that Loni was murdered because of her sexual identity or orientation, and at this time, Washington County detectives are investigating this tragedy as a hate crime.

"Loni, as is with all people, did not choose her sexual identity or orientation. Contrary to what some might think, sexual identity and sexual orientation are not choices. They are a given and cannot, under any circumstance, be changed. Unfortunately, there are individuals in conservative religious institutions, and some elected public officials in Washington County, who have helped create a climate that is hostile toward sexual minorities and this might have caused a situation to exist in which Loni's life came to a violent end and in a most tragic way. It is believed by some that these individuals will be found responsible, at least in part, for the tragic death of Loni [Kai].

"People of the Christian faith have a responsibility to teach religion as Christ taught it and not by placing their own agenda or interpretation on his words. Elected officials also have a responsibility to work towards the welfare of all their constituents, not against it. It is strongly felt by many that the murder of Loni [Kai] might never have occurred if people in prominent positions took responsibility for their actions by upholding the dignity and worth of all people and by not condemning nor putting down those with whom they disagree or dislike."

As of this episode's recording, the story of Loni Kai remains unresolved