2nd teen charged in Puna murders

By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

HILO, Hawai'i — A second teenage suspect was charged with first-degree murder yesterday in the slaying last month of two Puna men.

Kyle Zengy Thurston Hill, 19, is expected to be arraigned in District Court this afternoon on charges similar to those filed against co-defendant John McGovern, 18.

Police said McGovern admitted shooting Cassidy M. Toole, 20, and Wesley Alan Matheson, 19, at the victims' home on Anthurium Street in the Fern Acres subdivision sometime around May 6 and dumping their bodies in a vacant lot on Lehua Street in the same area.

Two bodies were found by police on Thursday. Preliminary autopsy results determined that both men died of gunshot wounds to the head.

Although investigators believe the two bodies to be those of Toole and Matheson, a final confirmation of their identities awaits comparisons with dental records from the Mainland.

No motive for the killings has been revealed, but the victims were acquaintances of the two suspects, police said.

McGovern was arraigned Monday and is confined at the Hawai'i Community Correctional Facility.

Hill was being held without bail last night in the Hilo police cellblock. Along with first-degree murder, Hill is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of using a firearm in commission of a felony.

Police issued an appeal for information about the two victims' whereabouts on May 15, after Toole's Honda Civic was found stripped and abandoned in Ka'u.

At first, police believed that Toole and Matheson were in the car when it ran off the road and into a ditch near the 70-mile marker of Mamalahoa Highway in the South Point area. But police now say the men were not in the car when it ran off the road.

McGovern, who is also charged with auto theft, had been seen driving the Honda, according to a police report.