Hawaii Dad Of Missing 'Peter Boy' Sentenced For Manslaughter

HONOLULU, HI — The father of a 6-year-old Hawaiian child known as "Peter Boy," who disappeared two decades, ago was sentenced to two decades years in prison for manslaughter under a deal with prosecutors.

Peter Kema Sr., who was sentenced Monday, must serve at least six years and eight months, TV station Hawaii News Now reported. Kema led police and prosecutors to a remote coastal area of the Big Island in April, but water and time prevented authorities from finding any remains, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rick Damerville said.

Kema passed a polygraph test in which he said he was telling the truth about where he dumped the remains, allowing his sentencing to move forward. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Prosecutors believe the child was abused and died from septic shock after a festering arm sore went untreated.

The boy's mother, Jayline Kema, was released from jail in April after serving a year for manslaughter. At a hearing last year, she agreed to facts that prosecutors laid out in court about abuse the boy suffered, her failure to get him medical treatment and his eventual death. That was the first official confirmation the child was dead.

The Kemas have long been suspects in their son's disappearance, but prosecutors said they didn't have enough evidence to charge them until last year, when a grand jury indicted the couple on murder counts.

After Peter vanished in 1997, he became the face of a Hawaii campaign for missing and abused children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Posters and bumper stickers asked, "So where's Peter?"

Peter Kema told authorities that he took his son from the Big Island to Oahu and gave him to someone named "Aunty Rose Makuakane" in an informal adoption. Police could not find a woman as described by Kema or airline records that indicated he had flown there.

Sometime between May and June 1997, the couple's then-4-year-old daughter heard Jayline Kema calling out for her husband and saw her trying to resuscitate the boy, prosecutors said. The girl later saw her brother in a box, prosecutors said.

In 2005, then-state Human Services Director Lillian Koller released more than 2,000 pages of heavily redacted documents, detailing allegations of abuse suffered by Peter and his siblings at the hands of their father.

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER, Associated Press

Photo credit: Hollyn Johnson/Hawaii Tribune-Herald via AP; Jennifer Sinco Kelleher/Associated Press