Posted on: Friday, May 31, 2002

Big Isle killer gets 150-year term

Advertiser News Services

HILO, Hawai'i — The Hawai'i Paroling Authority has set a minimum prison term of 150 years for a man convicted of a 1994 murder and robbery on the Big Island.

Jason Santos, 30, was found guilty last June in the slaying of rodeo horse dealer Vernon Souza Jr. of Kaua'i. In August, Circuit Judge Riki May Amano sentenced Santos to two life terms.

Souza's badly burned body was found in a section of charred brush off Saddle Road on Sept. 30, 1994. Prosecutors said he died of blows to the head and a slit throat in a cocaine deal that turned violent.

A grand jury indicted Santos and his alleged accomplice, Oliver White, in 2000. At the time, Santos was living in Nevada and White in North Dakota.

White was found mentally unfit to stand trial because of brain damage suffered in a traffic accident a month after the murder.

Although Santos' "max-out date would be 2150," the board will review Santos' case in 20 years, said Tommy Johnson, administrator of the Hawai'i Paroling Authority.

Amano passed sentence after Deputy Prosecutor Jack Matsukawa asked her to extend the 20-year robbery term to life with the possibility of parole and to tack that on to an identical term for the murder. "This is the most serious kind of person next to a serial killer," Matsukawa had said. "It was premeditated and he did it for the money. ... This kind of person should not be walking the streets."

Souza, 30, a noted rodeo performer and horse trader, was killed shortly after he arrived at the Hilo airport. Prosecutors said Santos slit Souza's throat while he was still in the car and stabbed and beat him. The car was doused with gasoline and set on fire.

During his trial, Santos blamed White for the killing, saying he was only along for the ride, but he admitted to helping to drag the body out of the car before it was burned.

The judge called Santos' crime "premeditated, planned, cold, calculating."

Even if one were to accept Santos' version of what happened, she said, "I find it inexplicable that he shows no remorse of his complicity in burning the body."