Disappearance still unsolved

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

In her heart, Maya Carrillo knows she will never see her son alive again.

Before returning to California, Maya Carrillo posted a sign at a nightclub at 478 'Ena Road where her son was last seen two years ago. His fiancée says he was beaten to death. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"There is a pressure on my heart that won't let up," Carrillo said outside the 'Ena Road nightclub where her son Carlos was last seen.

She had traveled from her home in La Jolla, Calif., in July to press investigators for answers — to "gain justice," she said. Instead, she left feeling empty.

"There are some people who know what happened who are not talking," she said. "I think he was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Carlos Carrillo, a 28-year-old nightclub promoter, disappeared July 4, 2000, from the bar then known as Evolution Waikiki, at 478 'Ena Road.

The last time nightclub workers say they saw him was about 2 a.m. as Carrillo fought with a bouncer. The fight started because Carrillo groped the bouncer's girlfriend, police said, after opening their investigation that summer.

Carrillo's fiancée, Jennifer Bray, also was there that night, after being called to drive him back to their Hale'iwa home because he said he was drunk. She says Carrillo was being beaten relentlessly while she was there, then a bouncer kidnapped her and drove her around Pearl City before letting her go hours later.

On July 6, police arrested the bouncer on suspicion of kidnapping Bray and an unrelated contempt-of-court warrant, but released him three days later. No charges have been filed in connection with the case.

Although Carrillo's name was never found on any flight records, the bouncer said he had driven the promoter to the airport at Carrillo's request, police said.

Police also said that the bouncer told them he rented a moving van on the morning of July 4 and used it to take a soiled rug and some barstools to the Waimanalo Gulch landfill in Nanakuli.

Carpet from the landfill was recovered as well as part of a blood- and vomit-stained carpet in a trash bin behind Evolution Waikiki, police said. But even after police searched the North Shore, at times by helicopter, Carrillo was never found.

Carlos Carrillo with fiancée Jennifer Bray, who left Hawai'i after telling police what she knew. Photo courtesy Maya Carrillo

Carlos Carrillo had moved to Hawai'i from San Diego with his fiancée eight months before he disappeared.

Carrillo, who told the management of Evolution Waikiki that he worked for an online music publication in Carlsbad, Calif., quickly found fans of the young music scene at the second-floor nightclub.

Carrillo stayed in touch with his family, calling several times a week to say hello or ask for recipes, his mother said. He was going to fly her in for Thanksgiving. He sent her a Mother's Day gift.

And he spoke of his love for Bray, whom he had known for two years. Maya Carrillo had given her son a family heirloom — a diamond ring — for his future wife.

Bray remains crushed by the experience, unable to get on with her life, according to her mother, Maggie Brennan.

"She still wears his engagement ring," Brennan said by telephone from her home in San Diego. "She still has his pictures up in her room. She still has his clothes."

Brennan believes that Carrillo is dead and worries that her daughter is the only link to killers who "go through their day and it doesn't bother them a bit."

When Bray arrived at the club to pick up Carrillo, it was closed and the patrons were gone. She said she was let inside and ushered to a booth near a room without a door. Bray said Carrillo was taken into the room and beaten to death.

She could hear him from where she was forced to sit for two hours.

"I was held there," Bray, 26, said by telephone from San Diego. "They didn't want to let me go. I could hear them hurting Carlos in the other room. I could hear him calling me. I wasn't able to do anything. They were torturing him."

Carrillo kept saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Bray recalled.

Bray said that when the beating ended, a bouncer and his girlfriend drove her around Pearl City. After nearly three hours they brought her back to the Waikiki club.

They told her that Carrillo had left the state, that someone had taken him to the airport and arranged for him to fly to Las Vegas.

At first, she wanted to believe them, she said. Hours later, she called police, haunted by her last memory of her fiancé.

He was lying on his back on the floor of the small room where he had been taken. He wasn't moving.

She told her story to police before quickly leaving the Islands.

From the beginning, the case was considered a homicide. But it has been a difficult case to pursue, one with few strong leads, said Lt. Bill Kato, who supervises the Honolulu Police Department's homicide investigators.

"With this case, we had a crime scene and blood and a few witnesses but we haven't been able to turn a corner yet at this point," Kato said.

Each passing day makes the case harder to close, he said.

"The scene changes. The public forgets. We don't get as many tips," Kato said.

The carpeting from the trash bin was compared to another piece of carpet from the landfill, but Kato won't say what testing revealed.

"We are still investigating," he said.

Those words ring hollow for Maya Carrillo.

In two years, the only apparent break in the case was a false alarm in March. Police telephoned her about a leg near Hanauma Bay. It left Carrillo sick to her stomach.

"For a whole month I was traumatized," she said. "How would I bring that back? How would I bury it?"

Tests proved that the leg, found by a diver, belonged to someone else. On learning that, Carrillo was glad she had never told other family members about the leg.

But even that would have been something.

"The case is at a standstill," Carrillo said last week after meeting with detectives. "There has been nothing new come in. I don't know. I don't know if they will even take it any further."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.