Investigators spent months searching for a man unaccounted for in Lahaina fire. Now his 6 children are asking the court to declare him deceased

The family of a man still considered missing since the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire is asking the court to declare him deceased after months of efforts to find the 73-year-old or his remains.

Elmer Lee Stevens is one of the last two names still left on the official unaccounted-for list, along with Robert H. Owens. Since June, the confirmed death toll from the wildfire has held steady at 102.

On Friday, Stevens’ six children filed a petition for determination of death of their father with the Second Circuit Court on Maui.

The petition says that Stevens was homeless and suffering from mental illness at the time of the Aug. 8, 2023 fire, living on the streets, beaches and parks of Lahaina. He had been living with his son Jedidiah Stevens off and on earlier in the year on Maui; and he had stayed briefly with a daughter, who gave him a change of clothes, also in 2023 on Maui.

But none of his children have been able to make contact with him since the fire. And at the time of his disappearance, the petition said Stevens had no spouse, reciprocal beneficiaries or living parents.

Just weeks after the fire, the six siblings had learned that their 66-year-old mother Tau Tala Tala Ponali had perished in the blaze. A celebration of life was held for “Aunty Tala” more than a year ago.

The Stevens’ family attorney Paul Starita told the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative on Monday that the children have agonized since the fire over not being able to locate their father.

“It’s been horrible. They lost their mother and they lost their father,” Starita said. ”It’s tough, the circumstances, him suffering from mental illness and then his bouts of homelessness.

“That’s tough on any family, but you always know that your parent is there still and there’s a difference. There’s always hope, maybe we can work this out … and then you end up with a situation like this where now there’s no hope. Now everyone knows the same truth, which is he perished in the fire.”

Starita said the family exhausted all avenues to find Stevens, who would have turned 75 on Jan. 15. Efforts included hiring private investigator Brian Martyn, who has 19 years of experience in the field. The petition said Martyn has successfully located several other individuals residing around the state of Hawaiʻi in homeless camps, shelters, hostels, rural areas and within the City and County of Honolulu. But Martyn came up empty, saying in his professional opinion that Elmer Stevens had died in the fire.

Daughter Emmanuel Stevens, an outreach case manager who works frequently with the homeless community on Maui, also searched for her father by circulating photographs among colleagues in the homeless outreach field and searching multiple homeless person databases, the petition said.

But she came up empty. And, so did the investigation by the Maui Police Department.

Both Stevens and Owens were seen within a month of the fire in the burn zone and did not have homes at the time, said Maui cold case detectives James Taylor and Steven Landsiedel during an interview in November.

The petition said a homeless person named Brandon Kelly was likely the last person to see Stevens, at a shelter, but that Kelly did not know anything more.

“They didn’t have housing and they had gone through a little period of time where their family hadn’t seen or spoke to them, so there was a gap,” Taylor said. “So that made the investigation a little more complicated because if (witnesses) say, ‘Hey, I saw him last week or yesterday’ at such and such location, that would have given us a more pinpoint area.”

Taylor and Landsiedel said the last time they could pin down a sighting of the two men was a month before the fire in the burn zone for Stevens, and about two weeks before the fire in the burn zone for Owens. They said they checked with the airlines that service Maui, but there is no record they ever departed the island.

Stevens did not have the money or resources to purchase airfare off the island of Maui, and his mental health conditions would have prevented him from driving, the petition said.

“We’ve extensively searched, conducted every avenue that we could think of,” Taylor said. “And I don’t have an answer. I don’t know where they are. I mean, we’ve looked, we’ve sent teams, canines.”

The petition said there was a joint effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and anthropologists to search for any remains or DNA evidence of Stevens in the Front Street area, the Lahaina Public Library, Lahaina breakwall and the Lahaina Harbor. The U.S. Coast Guard also used drones to search several miles of ocean from Lahaina Harbor to the Front Street area. But no remains were found.

Other searches included the parking lot at 505 Front Street in December 2023. To do so required the draining of the toxic water, which was a coordinated effort between Maui police, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross and a couple other government agencies.

“It had to be environmentally drained in conjunction with environmental standards,” Taylor said.

Maui Police Department spokesperson Alana Pico said last week there have been no updates to the cases for both Owens and Stevens.

“The police did an excellent job of trying to find him,” Starita said.

“Given the evidence here, Elmer, God rest his soul, spent his time in different areas in Lahaina and all those areas were consumed in the fire. So, given where he was last seen, given the fact that he connected with his kids, and certainly they were aware of where he was … There’s only one conclusion you can reach and that’s that he perished in the fire.”

The Maui cold case unit had started in November 2023 at the behest of MPD chief John Pelletier. At that time, there were still four persons listed as missing from the fire. Lydia Coloma and Paul Kasprzycki were eventually identified through DNA. 

The list started with more than 3,000 people who were unaccounted for in the immediate and chaotic aftermath of the fire, during which multiple agencies and private citizens were keeping lists, with many of them duplicate names.

While there has not been much public attention paid to what happened to the final two missing people from the Lahaina fire, Stevens and Owens are remembered in the Maui community of houseless residents and those who volunteer to help them.

The petition for determination of death will allow the family to be part of the proposed $4 billion fire settlement as it works its way through the courts.

“In order to either make a claim or someone’s wrongful death, whether you’re filing a lawsuit or you’re making a claim as part of the settlement, you have to have a determination that that person is dead,” Starita said. “And so in order for the kids to be able to bring that claim we have to have a death certificate. The only way you’re going to get a death certificate is if you now have a judicial determination of death.”

Starita said his law firm represents 2,200 clients from the Lahaina fire, but the Stevens case is the only one that required asking the court for a death determination.

Such a determination also will provides some finality of their father’s demise, he said.

“So, for them, it’s like ‘We know what happened to our dad, we’ve lost our dad,’ and it’s kind of adding insult to injury if you didn’t have a mechanism … where you had to wait five years or some designated period of time,” Starita said.

“But now that we’ve done the exhaustive investigation, at least they can have some closure. So, number one, we’re facilitating that closure where he is officially declared dead and then they can at least bring a claim. Our civil system is imperfect, right? The only thing we can do to recover is to seek a monetary reward and everyone would tell you they’d rather have their loved one back.”

On Tuesday, a daughter of Stevens said through a text message that the family is not granting interviews and is requesting privacy, and referred all questions to Starita.

Police said they could not provide information on Owens’ family, and neither a county homelessness official nor homeless advocates in the community knew Owens’ family.

Efforts to find anyone who knew Stevens or Owens well were not successful, but several people said they had seen them around prior to the fire, but not since.

Richard Tenison, a 70-year-old resident of Pu’uhonua o Nēnē, a state of Hawai’i Department of Human Services temporary tent shelter in Kahului, said last week that he remembers Owens.

“I haven’t been over to Lahaina since the fire, I’m scared to go over there, devastating,” said Tenison, who escaped the fire on foot. “I have not seen that gentleman on this property, but I do remember him from before the fire.”

Exact counts on Maui’s homeless population are hard to pin down, but a recent Bridging the Gap Hawai’i point-in-time count, which aims to provide a snapshot of homelessness on each island, noted 654 sheltered (in temporary or transitional housing) and unsheltered homeless people on Maui as of January 2024, down from 704 the year prior. The survey also counted 5,245 total people who were displaced by the fire and living in Red Cross shelters at hotels.

An outreach day was held at Kanaha Beach Park on Thursday that included the trailer from Maui Rescue Mission, the van from A Cup of Cold Water and a bus from Hui No Ke Ola Pono — they were on hand to deliver food, clothes and services ranging from cellphone charging stations, to medical and dental checkups and clothes washing and showers.

Maui Rescue Mission Executive Director Scott Hansen spoke with a friend at Pu’uhonua o Nēnē last week who did not wish to be fully identified, just saying that his name was Captain Rich. Both men said they had seen Owens in Lahaina but not after Aug. 8, 2023.

A lady named Kendra who declined to give her last name said she knew Owens: “I recognize his smile, yes, from Lahaina over 10 years ago.”

At the Kanaha outreach day, Paul Samuel Vella said he remembers seeing both men “around,” but could not say when.

Several homeless outreach advocates around the island said they know either Owens and Stevens or both, but none could be sure the last time they saw either one of them.

Hansen said Owens and Stevens are almost assuredly both deceased, and “the sad part about this is that somebody knows them. It’s really sad.”