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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Saturday, January 15, 2005

Kaua'i woman's last hours a mystery

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau

PORT ALLEN, Kaua'i — Weslyn Jerves' life ended violently Wednesday night on a rugged bluff by the ocean she loved.

Eighteen-year-old Weslyn Jerves' body was found Thursday morning on a coastal bluff alongside the old Port Allen-'Ele'ele Cemetery.

Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser

Police yesterday continued to ask for the public's help in re-creating her final hours, when she left a group of friends at Hanama'ulu Beach Park and turned up the next morning, halfway across the island, lying dead at the edge of a coastal graveyard near Port Allen.

Lt. Roy Asher said detectives yesterday were interviewing "persons of interest" and were seeking other people for questioning, but had made no arrests.

He said it does not appear Jerves' killing is related to two unsolved murders and a nearly fatal attack in 2000 that occurred farther down the island's west coast. In all three cases, women were beaten, stabbed and sexually assaulted.

"We have no reason to believe or suspect that this homicide may be linked to any previous homicide," he said.

Call police

Kaua'i police are asking anyone with information about activity Wednesday night near Glass Beach at Port Allen to call Lt. Roy Asher or Detectives Sam Sheldon or Marvin Rivera at (808) 241-1711.

Jerves, a member of a large local family, had been a canoe paddler as a 12- and 13-year-old, but recurrent problems with asthma helped her drift away from the sport.

"She became a really good paddler, a strong paddler, but she had a problem with asthma. Sometimes she would just sit on the beach and watch the canoes. She would rather be in a canoe than on land," said Barbara Prigge, her former coach in Kaiola Canoe Club's Na 'Opio program.

Friends of the 18-year-old Hanama'ulu woman remember her sweet temperament.

"She was a nice girl. A good girl," said a woman at Hanama'ulu Beach Park, who asked not to be identified. "We're trying to figure out what happened."

A little over a year ago, Jerves had a baby. Prigge remembers seeing her with the child at a party.

"She was really gentle and sweet and really good as a young mother. She was very attentive. You could see the love in her for that child," she said.

Then something happened. "She dropped out of everything suddenly," she said.

Friends at the beach said Jerves came there daily and sometimes spent the night. They said she was friendly and well-liked. They said her mother had become primary caregiver for Jerves' child, but that she picked up her baby regularly.

An anonymous phone tip at 7 a.m. Thursday led police to her body on a dirt roadway between an ocean bluff and the Port Allen-'Eel'ele Cemetery. The spot is secluded, though just a stone's throw from the popular Glass Beach at the base of the Port Allen electric plant.

Asher said that investigators did not find evidence of drugs where the body was found.

Asher said authorities are continuing to try to piece together how and with whom Jerves went from the beach at Hanama'ulu, a suburb of Lihu'e, to the rocky coast at Port Allen, nearly 20 miles away.

An autopsy was conducted yesterday, but police have not revealed the cause of death or other details "in order to maintain the integrity of the investigation," he said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.