Body found on Kaua'i coast

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau

LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Police recovered a decomposed body yesterday in a remote coastal area on the south side of Kaua'i.

Detectives said the state of decomposition made it impossible to immediately identify the body or determine the cause of death. The body is believed to be that of a woman.

Police were called to the site, in a grassy area east of the Nomilu Fishpond, a natural inland pool along the southern coast between Po'ipu and Port Allen. It is also known as Palama Pond.

Authorities said they expected an autopsy, to be performed today, to use dental records to determine identity and suggest a cause of death.

Police would not speculate whether the body could be that of 38-year-old Lisa Simao, a homeless woman from Kalaheo who was last seen July 23 and was reported missing July 25.

Simao had been camping in the Nomilu Fishpond area with the friend who reported her missing.

Police had no comment on the possibility of any link with a series of unsolved attacks on women, two of them fatal, on Kaua'i in 2000.

Each of those attacks occurred near the shoreline, to women of ages 38 to 52, one of them a camper. Those attacks occurred on the west side of the island, and the nearest was about 10 miles from the Nomilu Pond area.