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Season Six: Holiday Episode Ten (2025)
14 Plays9 minutes ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Podcast Introduction and Recording Context
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:59
Speaker
We record this in like the dead of summer. And um i know it's it's the holidays as we're talking, but like we're sweating, so it's sometimes difficult to get in the mood.
00:01:11
Speaker
But I realized that there's a cure for that. And a cure could just be to think that we're like spending holiday on some tropical island. And then we'll be able to get in the mood.
00:01:26
Speaker
That's funny because I've actually spent the holiday season in very hot places. Yeah. So that's what we're doing as we
History of Sand Island
00:01:35
Speaker
record this. We're deep into the hostage-taking episodes. By my count, I think this is story number 10.
00:01:42
Speaker
And um I could be wrong on that, but I can confirm. Okay. So this takes place in ah an interesting spot. ah Have you ever heard of Sand Island?
00:01:56
Speaker
Not before I read about this. So San Island has an interesting backstory itself. This is the island that you see at the entrance to Honolulu Harbor. So it's an island within the city of Honolulu, Hawaii. That's where this takes takes place. So it was known as Quarantine Island, and that's because when ships would come in during the 19th century and they thought that passengers on the ship potentially were contagious,
00:02:25
Speaker
They would drop them off here first to find out if they were actually contagious. And it had a really kind of terrible use during world War II. It was used as an army internment camp.
00:02:38
Speaker
And that was where we put expatriates from Germany, Italy, and any of the other Axis countries that were living in Hawaii. But it's also where we put Japanese Americans.
00:02:51
Speaker
ah The camp there opened in December of 1941, which would have been shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And one of the terrible things that was happening around the country is there was this Subsequent to the attacks on Pearl Harbor, there were these incredible mass arrests of civilians um who were being accused of ah what's known as fifth column activity.
00:03:17
Speaker
don't know if you're familiar with a concept the concept of fifth column. But it is a group of people who are basically a cell within um a a hostile country. The TV shows made about this over the years. i don't know that any of them actually ever focused on the World War II part.
00:03:37
Speaker
But Sand Island is eventually closed off, the camp there. But 600 Hawaiian residents would pass through Sand Island between December of 1941 and March of And that's because largely they had um transferred the internees over to the Department of Justice or to the Department of the Army.
00:04:02
Speaker
And they had 149 people left in February of 1942, but they moved all of them over to a much larger internment camp on Oahu.
00:04:15
Speaker
so
00:04:18
Speaker
There was a sort of odd thing that happened with squatting there in the 70s. 100 Native Hawaiians who were experiencing homelessness cleaned up the island and they built homes there. and They took up residence.
00:04:32
Speaker
But 180 acres of the island was reclaimed by the state of Hawaii for industrial and recreational development. yeah This is the early 1980s, and they evicted everyone that was living there.
00:04:46
Speaker
kind of a terrible thing. I always see empty schools and stuff and think, why don't they turn this into something? and then I realize a lot of the world doesn't think that way.
John Miranda's Grievance with Seal Masters
00:04:58
Speaker
But where we end up on Sand Island is February 6th of 1996. It's just after seven o'clock in the morning.
00:05:08
Speaker
And a 28-year-old man named John Miranda He goes into the Seal Masters of Hawaii building. So this Seal Masters is a company that does waterproofing sort for structures.
00:05:26
Speaker
So Seal Masters is a waterproofing company that is based and um Sand Island, Honolulu. John Miranda had previously been working there, but in 1995, he'd been fired.
00:05:41
Speaker
so He had kind of simmered for about eight months. And at the end of this eight months, he had just started to become enraged at having no money and having no job.
00:05:54
Speaker
he actually accused the company officials for Seal Masters of Hawaii of racism and firing him solely because he was Hawaiian and Puerto Rican.
00:06:07
Speaker
So this day in February, Miranda had armed himself with a sawed-off shotgun and a knife. He burst into the front doors of the building and he starts to demand $20,000 in cash from the company.
00:06:24
Speaker
The company owner, Harry Lee, was prepared to accept the deal and to give John Miranda the cash. Isn't that weird? ah It's probably some indication that they either want to make him go away or maybe they're acknowledging a little bit of wrongdoing or something. Yeah, because they call it a deal, right? Yep.
00:06:45
Speaker
Like all you got to do is like bust in with a gun. Of course, you know there's a reason why you never negotiate with terrorists, right? Right. And in this instance, it's because Harry Lee's wife insists they should call the police.
Hostage Situation and Radio Confession
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
Well, right, but you know he'll just be back for more later is the premise behind the ultimate statement. know. i know I was being a little facetious, but yeah. But it's interesting because at that moment, so knowing that, going in, Harry Lee, it says, it oddly enough, that he's prepared to accept the deal of giving him $20,000 in cash from the company in exchange for...
00:07:25
Speaker
not holding them hostage, I guess. yeah I'm not really sure exactly what the deal part of it is, but we have this moment in time where like, you know, he gives them $20,000 in cash and he leaves, but instead Harry ah harry Lee's wife insists he calls the police and we get this and instead.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, so we end up with that phone call being made and John Miranda taking that time to take five employees who are working hostage. So one of them is this former supervisor who is a vice president of the Seal Masters company.
00:08:04
Speaker
It's a 59-year-old guy named Guy George. So George was the one who had personally said to John Miranda,
00:08:17
Speaker
You no longer work here. Get out.
00:08:21
Speaker
So while he's taking hostages, John Miranda opens fire with this sawed-off shotgun, and he ends up hitting George in the leg. So this is a, i don't know how familiar people are with sawed-off shotguns. we can't They come up from time to time.
00:08:38
Speaker
This is a serious wound. It is described as having taken off half of Guy George's ah right lower right leg.
00:08:51
Speaker
So it's a serious injury. He's now going to be sort of a liability in all of this. Right. You wonder if he knew about the $20,000. Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
You've got to wonder if he knew that the deal might be taken. Really? Right. I mean, doesn't this like escalate so quickly? it does. Like it all happens like, like really fast. Um,
00:09:16
Speaker
There's ah a radio station in Hawaii. It had been known I-94. was like a top radio station And ends being rebranded 2003, 2004.
00:09:27
Speaker
from about nineteen eighty six to about two thousand and ten it had been a disco station from nineteen seventy nine till nineteen eighty five and it ends up being rebranded in two thousand and three a little bit it becomes 93.9 at that point that's that's how people know it today i think they know it today as 93.9 the beat but nevertheless we've had this happen before happens here and that is John Miranda calls into I-94 and he tells them what's going on which isn't that a really interesting aspect of this story yeah
00:10:03
Speaker
it It is definitely an interesting aspect of this story. It's also sort of unbelievable to me that people do this. Well, it's not unbelievable to me. In fact, if we didn't have like social media and cell phones, we this would still be happening, right? you they Because radio and TV, news TV, live TV, are two of the only ways in the 90s you could like immediately get in touch with the whole world.
00:10:30
Speaker
And, well, I guess maybe not the whole world, but a wide amount of people. That's how we would go viral, though, today, if we were if it were a possibility to do that. like Sure, right, exactly. um But now, see, back then, we didn't have the capability of like you know sending everybody videos, instantaneously messaging people. like It was a completely different world, right?
00:10:55
Speaker
Right. And we've had a lot of situations where... an alternative or a option for a perpetrator or a victim even would be to call the local media, which the radio or the news, right? Yeah. I felt like that was really interesting because that wouldn't happen today.
00:11:17
Speaker
no and we wouldn't have, I think it's been a while since we've even really had a live broadcast. Well, now you would just go on social media. Right. You just go live on Facebook now.
00:11:29
Speaker
Or whatever, right. And so it's like a whole different thing now. but So he gets on with the DJs because I guess he felt like he had to tell somebody what he was doing. I'm not really sure, except he just wanted people to know, right? That's how you did that back then.
00:11:46
Speaker
Right. And so according to one of the hostages, Tom McNeil... Every little thing is setting this guy off, and that's why he ends up on the phone with radio station, because he wants to tell his story. He doesn't feel like he's going to be able to. So Tom McNeil is one of the hostages, and then ultimately he's going to be But...
00:12:09
Speaker
but What Tom McNeil did that made John Miranda mad that day was after Guy George got shot, Tom McNeil tied ah tourniquet on him.
00:12:23
Speaker
And some of the words from this radio broadcast, ah John Miranda is clearly not a little out of his mind. And he basically says he's not going to he's not going to surrender.
00:12:37
Speaker
And he literally says to the I-94 radio DJs, it's going to end with a good bang because I'm sure as hell not going to jail. I ain't killing myself. Fuck that. You guys can take care of that.
00:12:50
Speaker
Now, Guy George is able to escape. He goes out a window. He's bleeding profusely. Police put him in an ambulance and he gets taken over to Queens Medical Center.
00:13:02
Speaker
At that point in time, while talking to these radio DJs who... For their credit, they're trying to talk him down and get him to surrender peacefully. That's why he's responding the way he's responding.
00:13:14
Speaker
John Miranda indicates he's already been to jail. He has no intention of going back. Law enforcement is cordoning off the area. They get Guy George away. And for no good reason, the enraged John Miranda...
00:13:31
Speaker
takes everybody else downstairs and basically lets them go. So he walks outside four remaining hostages. orders them to walk down the steps and and go, and then he grabs Tom McNeil.
00:13:45
Speaker
at the last second. It takes him with him. He has taped his sawed-off shotgun with duct tape to the back of tom McNeil's head. And John Miranda has taped his own hand to the trigger of the gun. So it seems like he's letting everybody go, but for some reason he holds on to Tom.
00:14:03
Speaker
So he has one hostage left and he's going to remain with Tom McNeil for hours. And I say that because if you look up this particular hostage taking, you will notice that a lot of the photos were taken of like this really sort of sensational moment where...
00:14:28
Speaker
John Miranda is standing with this gun taped to Tom McNeil's head and hair and head. What was that about? I'm not sure why he did that. I think it was just the determination of not letting the guy go Well, and something to note about the fact that there are all these pictures. yeah In the meantime, the news crew showed up, right? Yeah. We've got pictures, and Tom McNeil has long hair.
00:14:54
Speaker
yeah he does. He has long hair. And... i All I can think is how awful that had to have felt to have that because he said they taped it to his head, right?
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah. And duct tape in your hair is god-awful. It would be absolutely terrible trying to handle that. Not to mention it's awfully like stressful to be that close to somebody with that kind of gun who has already fired it.
00:15:25
Speaker
who's out of their mind. Right. I mean, he blew off George's leg. And by the way, he took, so George gets drug over to, after his leg is blown off or partially blown off, Miranda drags him over there as the police are coordinating off the area. And he uses George to show them, I've already shot somebody.
00:15:49
Speaker
then George jumps out the window. And that's why he takes Tom McNeil hostage, because George got away. Yeah.
00:16:00
Speaker
It's absolutely terrifying to think about all of that going down. And you have to wonder, so he's there because he got fired, and he has no money, and he's having a hard time, right?
00:16:13
Speaker
Right. What part about any of this stuff that's happening, except the initial $20,000 possibility that got sidetracked because the wife insisted the police be called, what part like of any of this fixes any of that?
00:16:35
Speaker
i don't know that it fixes anything here. Wait, but what is he thinking, though? Like... He's just trying to direct his rage somewhere.
00:16:45
Speaker
ah guess. Well, so if he had gone in and gotten the $20,000, that actually would have fixed some of his gripes, right? Except next time, he would just be right back there again. And when it didn't go his way, he is acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
00:17:03
Speaker
he is. With a gun. With a gun. And I've never figured out if he, um I don't know this is true, but I'm going to throw it out there like it might be true. i think he locked himself out of the building.
00:17:16
Speaker
ah really? Yeah. i So they never say this because of how it all goes down. But I think like the the way that this unfolds, first of all, unlike like ah how I picture hostage situations, which I know we've talked about on the last like days and stuff.
00:17:34
Speaker
This starts very early in the morning. We're on the morning radio show. He's letting people go. Local news is there. And we're not even at lunch yet. And so I picture, like, with the brightness and everything that's going on, nobody thought about the fact that he could not get back in the door.
00:17:54
Speaker
So he's stuck. on At first, he's stuck on a stairwell. And he's stuck there for a long time.
Miranda's Criminal Actions and Consequences
00:18:00
Speaker
You know what? I bet you're right. i think I think he's, like, based on the pictures and the video, I think that we can't get back in the building.
00:18:08
Speaker
And, like, he continues to stand off with Tom McNeil for several more hours there. One of the things that comes up in the course of this standoff is really interesting to me, and that is the story of Sherry in Holmes.
00:18:26
Speaker
Had you heard about her before all of this? yeah So somehow John Miranda indicates that he has killed his girlfriend, which I'm thinking if you've killed your girlfriend and you're trying to get $20,000, maybe I'm starting to understand your rage a little bit.
00:18:51
Speaker
Maybe it's more fear-based. But she had been reported missing about a week before all of this happens. She's 32 years old at the time.
00:19:04
Speaker
So she's a little older than John Miranda, who's 28. And i can't imagine she's super happy with her younger boyfriend that doesn't have a job and is probably this angry with her as he is with these people.
00:19:19
Speaker
And a according to police, one of the things that John Miranda quote, hinted at was that he had been responsible a week earlier for her death.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's going to be a little while before we're able to put all of that together, and that's sort of the footnote to this story. But we end up with essentially tom McNeil, John Miranda,
00:19:48
Speaker
And them standing on this outdoor staircase in plain view. And that, to me, is what makes this unusual, this hostage situation.
00:20:00
Speaker
The plain view? Being in plain view, stuck on the staircase, which is clearly, like, it's, like, made of metal, like, from a fire escape. So it's going to be hot.
00:20:14
Speaker
And... They're going to be there for the rest of the afternoon. i pulled an article from the Edmonton Journal ah to talk a little bit about Tom McNeil.
00:20:26
Speaker
And here's what they say. This is from April 2017 by a woman named Catherine Griekowski. Her headline is, Thru's Grove man who survived 96 Honolulu hostess taking a quote, exceptional human.
00:20:43
Speaker
For nearly seven hours in 1996, Spruce Grove resident Tom McNeil relied on instincts while being held hostage in a Honolulu business. A sawed-off shotgun duct taped to his neck by a disgruntled former co-worker.
00:20:57
Speaker
The hostage crisis on February 6, 1996 unfolded after the six foot five John Miranda. so I'm throwing that in there because that like anytime somebody's that big...
00:21:11
Speaker
Like, it makes me wonder, like, what were you thinking when you're standing there with a shotgun taped to your neck? Burst into the Seal Masters of Hawaii building just before 8 a.m., demanding $20,000. They go to talk a little bit about Tom McNeil, but it says John Miranda, 28, had been fired months earlier, and he was ready to deliver on his promise that this ordeal was going to end with a gun blast.
00:21:33
Speaker
And that's what he told the radio host. Detectives later discovered that he had already killed his girlfriend, Sherilyn Holmes. The seething Miranda after hours of unsuccessful bargaining with police told Tom McNeil, then 30, to count down from 60 before he pulled the trigger.
00:21:51
Speaker
McNeil refused, twisting away, and bullets flew. But McNeil escaped without serious injury. So you've only got the one guy here, all right? He has no hostages. You're suddenly going to be without this guy.
00:22:05
Speaker
yeah And so the article that we're, that I'm pulling from here says McNeil now 51. And I had to do a lot of math for this. So 96, 2017, he's 51 years old.
00:22:20
Speaker
He's 29, 31 goes down. He said, I was not going to count down to my own death. He's now living in a place called Spruce Grove and he's reflecting on the drama He tells the reporter he had taken the job at the concrete restoration and waterproofing company after he had been working at a plastic facility up in Edmonton.
00:22:43
Speaker
He says in the aftermath of his brush with John Miranda, he had counted his blessings, he quickly married his girlfriend, and he put down roots in the Aloha State for 21 years.
00:22:57
Speaker
But he ends up returning Canada because he had a mysterious health problem that could not be properly diagnosed in Hawaii. And people in Hawaii kept telling him that he had post-traumatic stress disorder from having been part of this hostage thing.
00:23:20
Speaker
I think he had PTSD from having duct tape put in his hair. Could be. and know but having a gun at your head does, yeah, he did, even if he's like, no, I don't have that. But turns out he had...
00:23:33
Speaker
epilepsy. Oh, yeah. Well, that would be... Sometimes that's brought on by stress, no? Yeah, it could be. So here's his version of the story as to how things went down, and it's really interesting. He says, in the heat on the metal staircase, after basically seven hours...
00:23:53
Speaker
John Miranda had finally decided to end it, and he had ordered Tom McNeil to count down from 60. And Tom McNeil says he believed that Miranda could say 10, but that could mean zero. So it was sort of do or die situation, and it's kind of strange to put it to words, but the SWAT team was going ballistic, and there was suddenly yelling and chaos.
00:24:12
Speaker
This is according to Tom McNeil. With a swift motion, McNeil swung hard to his left, Miranda pulled the trigger, And the shot went through Tom McNeil's sweat-drenched T-shirt.
00:24:26
Speaker
He spun around and grabbed the shotgun, fighting with the hulking hostage-taker, and he ducked. He heard a boom. John Miranda had fired another shot.
00:24:37
Speaker
The SWAT team fired 13 shots back. So according to McNeil's recollection, he says, then he drops, and the SWAT team is yelling at me to get away from the area.
00:24:49
Speaker
So I'm kind of scrambling to get away from that area, and I'm looking over. It's very strange. I'm looking at John Miranda dying and wincing, but the shotgun's not there.
00:25:02
Speaker
Tom McNeil had been running away with the shotgun still hanging by the duct tape from his head. Exactly, duct tape. He ended up laying down and pointing to the gun. He said, I grabbed the barrel of it and said the words, I've had about enough of you today.
00:25:17
Speaker
Tom McNeil ripped off the duct tape and the gun. He said, when I got in the ambulance, my heart was racing out of my chest. My blood pressure was skyrocketing, but I knew that I wasn't shot.
00:25:29
Speaker
So John Miranda was taken to a hospital after being shot apparently 13 times where he later died. I think he was probably shot in critical mass, right? I mean they were. Yeah. He had just missed the hostage. Yeah. I mean. So they were they were responding. What drugs do you think he had in the system?
00:25:49
Speaker
Meth. Yep. Meth, cocaine, and marijuana. Yeah. I think that meth is what really puts people over the edge sometimes. So the media starts calling Tom McNeil that day, by the way.
00:26:03
Speaker
And they asked if John Miranda has mentioned this girlfriend who went missing. And we're going to get some information about her a little later on but we're going talk about Tom McNeil for just another minute or two because I think his story is really interesting.
00:26:17
Speaker
He says that six days after being held hostage, he and Sherry Davidson, they got married. She was the administrative assistant for Seal Masters of Hawaii.
00:26:28
Speaker
They had been living together for two years, and they got married at a friend's beachside mansion. Their boss, Lee, so Harry Lee, he gives the bride away. The groom's family is up in Alberta, Canada, and the bride's family is from Texas, so they don't get a chance to attend, but they do have a second wedding ceremony on the island a little later on when some family members finally make the trip.
00:26:52
Speaker
A year after the hocks is taking, Tom McNeil and Sherry McNeil They start their own business and he becomes a licensed contractor. Business had started picking up, but Sherry wanted to go back to Texas.
00:27:08
Speaker
So she returns to her home state and Tom stays in Honolulu. Now they eventually end up getting divorced, but at the time of this article, Tom says that they still talked.
00:27:20
Speaker
In 2008, the world economy crashed and Tom McNeil's business began to suffer, but so did his health. One minute, he was at a friend's house, and three weeks later, he emerged from and um from a medically induced coma in Honolulu's Queens Hospital.
00:27:37
Speaker
He had been having seizures. So the diagnosis that he gets at the time is for epilepsy. His mother falls ill in 2010, and Tom McNeil moves back to Alberta, Canada, settling as best he could in Spruce Grove.
00:27:55
Speaker
Years later... Doctors at the University of Alberta Hospital finally found the culprit behind the epilepsy. He had a shrunken hippocampus.
00:28:07
Speaker
So Tom McNeil ends up spending November 2015 in a hospital as surgeons put sensors into his skull, two on each side of his brain.
00:28:18
Speaker
Have you ever heard of this happening? No. No. It's so fascinating to me. So they implant these electrodes with the help of robotics, I guess, for precision. and the doctors induce him to have a seizure while he's hooked up to an EEG machine.
00:28:38
Speaker
And video cameras record the seizure and they pinpoint the part of the brain where they were coming from. So they're trying to rewire parts of his brain.
00:28:51
Speaker
According to Dr. Jeffrey Church, who is a neurologist and epileptologist, he said that he and a team of experts were working to determine whether they needed to remove McNeil's scarred brain tissue from the hippocampus.
00:29:08
Speaker
But Tom McNeil is doing well enough that the surgery wasn't needed right away. In the event that McNeil's seizures would get worse and they determined the benefits would outweigh the risks, the teams would try to ensure removal of a scarred piece of brain that would not result in paralysis or problems talking.
00:29:25
Speaker
And that sounds crazy to me, by the way. You've already been through like the experience of a lifetime with a hostage situation, and now they're talking about, we're going pull a part of your brain now.
00:29:39
Speaker
According to Dr. Jersh, he believed that McNeil's seizures could have initially been brought on by alcohol use. And that is something that Tom McNeil acknowledges. He says that the hostage crisis that had unfolded in 1996 made him something of a celebrity in Hawaii.
00:29:55
Speaker
He could walk into nearly any bar and be recognized with fellow patrons buying him endless rounds of shots and beers. According to Dr. Jersh, living this life as a national celebrity, he got to the point where he was just drinking too much.
00:30:10
Speaker
The prolonged seizures caused scars on his brain. Even though he hasn't been drinking for years, the remnants of other seizures had scarred the hippocampus, and it caused McNeil to have medically intractable epilepsy.
00:30:27
Speaker
Having known Tom now for a number of years, I'm always remarking that Tom is such a happy-go-lucky person that somebody with epilepsy and seizures as severe as he presently has would be terribly stressed.
00:30:39
Speaker
That's according to his doctor. He said Tom is an exceptional human. He never gets down about these things, and he's always looking on the bright side. So according to this article, about 70% of people who have epilepsy surgery do not end up having another seizure in their lifetime.
00:30:56
Speaker
In about 80 to 90% of cases, there's at least a 50% reduction in the number of seizures. But Dr. Jersh said the biggest worry is that there can be complications that result in changes in behavior. And he says sometimes a complication can be memory difficulties.
00:31:14
Speaker
I find all this fascinating, but the fact that this guy is like the guy who ends up being the last hostage is like really interesting to me.
00:31:25
Speaker
um We don't get a lot of resolution from this article. It's just talking about the ongoing epilepsy. For a little more nuanced version of how the hostage situation wrapped up, the police considered the hostages that escaped to be unharmed, except for Tom McNeil.
00:31:45
Speaker
He escapes on his own, and he only has like minor injuries. They're mainly from a brief struggle with John Miranda at the end and hitting the ground. And the duct tape being ripped out of his hair. Right.
00:31:57
Speaker
Right. So Tom McNeil had been able to walk to a nearby ambulance and he was treated for the cuts and bruises. he had no gunshot wounds. Guy George, he had suffered the worst injuries with a gunshot wound to his leg, but he ends up being, so he ends up surviving.
00:32:13
Speaker
John Miranda, he survives the shooting by police, but dies later in the day from complications from the treatment. that's all they say. But basically he is the only fatality during this particular hostage crisis.
00:32:28
Speaker
And then coming back around to Sherri Lynn Holmes.
Aftermath and Media Impact
00:32:32
Speaker
So Sherri Lynn Holmes, she had been thought to be John Miranda's girlfriend.
00:32:39
Speaker
Like at the time this is all going on. She had been reported missing. And I think I mentioned the date was January 31st, 1996. So that's about a week before the hostage standoff.
00:32:52
Speaker
And according to police during the standoff, Miranda had hinted that he had killed Sherri Lynn Holmes. So they get an informant's tip a little later on, and police end up searching ah a little fish pond, or I've seen it described as a a marsh called Kalanui.
00:33:16
Speaker
And they're looking for the body of homes. And the Honolulu police and a team of cadaver dogs scour the area several times. And they finally do find a cardboard box that was buried a few yards off of Kapaa Quarry Road.
00:33:35
Speaker
This box is pulled out of a shallow grave on March 29th, 1996.
00:33:41
Speaker
So at this point, John Miranda's dead. It's about two months since Sherry Lynn Holmes was last seen. And inside the box, they find a highly decomposed body, which was too decomposed to be positively identified at the time.
00:34:01
Speaker
But police were nearly certain that this is going to be the body of Sherry Lynn Holmes.
00:34:09
Speaker
By the way, I think it's so interesting that both of their girlfriends were named Sherry. Yeah, it if you're not following closely, you can get confused. So they did not have dental records for Sherilyn Holmes, but they end up utilizing the Army's identification lab, which was based out of Honolulu.
00:34:27
Speaker
And they use DNA and photo imaging technology to be certain. And they end up confirming that the body was that of Sherilyn Holmes.
00:34:37
Speaker
And they also confirm that they believe she was murdered. by john Miranda Jr. Now, I've read a couple of different blurbs in the Star Bulletin. a guy named Rod O'Hara, he wrote that a fingerprint comparison had been done and that it had determined that the body that was discovered where we were just describing was her.
00:35:00
Speaker
It looks like they tried to pull her fingerprints from her driver's license records, which I didn't know. i don't remember getting. Different states do different things. Okay. But in that little blurb, he said that they compared the driver's license records with partial prints recovered from the grave site. So I don't think it was physically on her. I think it was something she had with her in the grave.
00:35:24
Speaker
They further described her body as being found in a one and a half to two foot deep grave off Kappa Square Quarry Road. They said that it was wrapped in a plastic covering, which may have been where to get the prints from, and had been placed inside a cardboard box.
00:35:39
Speaker
And they determined that she died from asphyxia, And according to a homicide detective named Cliff Rubio, they believe that she had been strangled by John Miranda Jr. I found that to be pretty interesting. This story overall is like one of those things where like it kind of disappears into the ether.
00:36:02
Speaker
And it's such interesting story. Right. Well, it's it's sort of like, ah so he was taking the long way around to committing suicide, essentially, or suicide by cop.
00:36:14
Speaker
Right. And basically, i imagine his girlfriend was not happy he wasn't working, and they got into a physical altercation, and he killed her out of anger. Sort of like a classic domestic violence story.
00:36:28
Speaker
issue right yeah and then he's like sitting around on his drugs i imagine that would be the typical escape and then he's like well i killed her but like she was right and now my problem's not fixed right yeah especially if she was working and supporting them oh that would make it way worse way worse And that's why he a week later, was like, well, the reason I killed her is because i because she was bitching about me not working. The reason I'm not working is because those guys fired me. I'm going to go get money from them, right? Yeah, it's never his fault.
00:37:07
Speaker
You see what I mean though, but I can see where this spiraled very quickly. And the only thing that's ever going to happen in this situation is he's going to jail or he's going to die by his hand or by the cops shooting him, right?
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. That actually, it makes a lot of sense to me. It's very sad, right? It is. It's always interesting to see that type of thing, but I think that's probably exactly how it went down because he just kept doing things that were not beneficial to him.
00:37:35
Speaker
I feel like we could just put out like a public service announcement memo that says that like nobody ever finds the employee that goes back into the business that they got fired from like and does acts of violence because they were fired. Nobody ever sides with them. Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
Because you're kind of showing yourself like because that's how you handle the situation, right? Yeah, I mean, i like I have some empathy for him. I have some sympathy for him up to the point that you discover, like, not only is he doing this and demanding money from his former employer, but he also has apparently killed, maybe by strangulation, definitely asphyxiated in some way his girlfriend.
00:38:22
Speaker
Before. Right, before he does all of this. And, you know, you start to lose the ability to... empathize with somebody who's doing things like that. Well, sure. Right. And, you know, to be fair, we don't know how much math you had in the system, but my understanding is once you're hooked on math, all you do is try to get more math.
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. And it makes you cranky or I guess it does different things to different people. Yeah. It makes perfect sense to me that you know, he was just being fueled by an addiction, essentially, which is why it's so terrible, right? I mean, yeah because it's it's pointless. you're you're not The euphoria you're trying to experience isn't anything real to begin with. Right.
00:39:17
Speaker
It's the party in your head, essentially. It's just a really sad situation. And then going in and demanding money, and then... I don't know. For some reason, I really get stuck on the whole, like, Harry Lee's going to accept the deal. Yeah, I get i get stuck on that, don't know. think that's a little crazy. But, no, I could see him wanting to like, just kind of make him go away. But I think you're right, though. Like, you're essentially, you're renting...
00:39:45
Speaker
like you're peace and quiet from terrorists. Like you have to make a new payment. Yeah. He would have been back, especially if he was getting money because he had killed his food. So I don't know what, how to put it. If she supported them yeah and he killed her. And then like one week goes by and then he realizes, Oh, there's no money coming in. Yeah.
00:40:06
Speaker
Yeah. And it really is stuck. Yeah. Right, exactly. and But see, he what's he going to do, like finally get a job after he spends the 20 grand? I doubt it. So, I mean, he would just be set. Anytime in those situations, you're just setting yourself up, right? Yeah. That's why it's like better to never give in to that kind of thing because it never ends.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah. This one, like, honestly, this story doesn't have much of a rabbit hole. um I've always found that interesting. I love Hawaii. I've always loved Hawaii. um There is a little bit more you can go do on this if you want to, if you have an interest in this story. And I think it's on YouTube.
00:40:46
Speaker
At the end of World's Wildest Police Chases, they have a Wildest Police shootout.
00:40:57
Speaker
I think it's episode two. So at the end of that ah episode, you can watch this unfold because they have got the the television cameras.
00:41:09
Speaker
Like the end of this is document. Yeah, the news showed up. Yeah. If you want to see it happen, you can you can watch the very end of it unfold. ah Kind of how Tom McNeil described it.
00:41:22
Speaker
Well, and I think that that's what was so impactful about, that's what made Tom McNeil sort of like a local celebrity was because they people saw it, right?
00:41:33
Speaker
It wasn't just about, like, it wasn't just him telling the story. you can see it. It's intense. The whole situation is intense because you got a crazy person, a really tall, crazy person yeah with a gun.
00:41:48
Speaker
like, like it's It's sort of a, it's like a confluence of follies because of all the different things that happen. Like George falling out the window and then at the end, like he's like, count down to your death. He's like, no, I'm not going to. And then all hell breaks loose because he gets away.
00:42:08
Speaker
i think that, I think the the kind of confluence of follies is a really good way to describe this and this happening. Yeah, because I wonder if, I don't know, if you go in somewhere, I would not expect somebody to agree with me just because I had a gun that they should give me $20,000, okay? Yeah. However, I don't know if he thought that or not, and i it doesn't seem like it was super planned out.
00:42:35
Speaker
No, no. This guy this guy was not doing a good job here. even from the perspective of like what I think he would have been trying to accomplish.
00:42:46
Speaker
The minute that like the wife wants to involve the police and if he takes hostages instead of just leaving, he does himself out. He seals his fate.
00:42:57
Speaker
But I guess, you know, he had already killed her So maybe is this is sort of par for the course for him. Well, yeah, like I said, he's taking the long way around to suicide, right? Yeah. Because he's I mean, what is,
00:43:12
Speaker
he's got to get money from somewhere and this is not the answer no matter what. And it's interesting. I imagine that the business owner was having compassion, right?
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah. for For the situation. I don't know if maybe something did go wrong at work. I imagine he wasn't a great worker and that's why he didn't have his job anymore because that's typically what happens. Um,
00:43:40
Speaker
Because, you know, if somebody's a really great worker, you never want to get rid of them. Yeah. I mean, i don't know if any of what he's saying is accurate in terms of, like, why he gets let go, but I tend to agree with you. And, you know, it's it's interesting because there are elements to this that I don't think I can ever wrap my head around related to the racism, being a local, feeling like there are outsiders here that are out to get you.
00:44:14
Speaker
But like all of that's hard for me to take seriously, knowing that he's been out of work for eight months, and then also knowing that he's killed his girlfriend a week before this. I don't think there was any real racism going on.
00:44:27
Speaker
i think that that is just his view of it. Yeah. Like he just wants poor me, you know, and the fact that, you know, he was always late, that he messed things up, that he often came to work intoxicated or under the influence. I don't know that any of this is true, but I'm just taking a guess.
00:44:48
Speaker
You know, probably that's the reason he got fired. It had nothing to do with him being Hawaiian and Puerto Rican. That's just my guess. I mean, I could be totally wrong, but usually if you have a good worker, like they're they're, especially in this type of situation, because this is a, I think a production company, right? That's what it sounds like.
00:45:11
Speaker
this is a, yeah. So this is a production facility for concrete and waterproofing. Right. And so they're going to want hard workers that do the job. They're not going to hire people for to their heritage or whatever.
00:45:27
Speaker
But I mean, but that's an easy way to say like, poor me. Right. Yeah. I mean, I know that like systemically the locals have some issues that are similar to what he described. I just don't know that like this particular,
00:45:47
Speaker
don't, I don't know if there's anything to justify what he did here just because I can't get past the barrier of this guy killed his girlfriend a week before this.
00:45:58
Speaker
Oh, there's no justification for this no matter what. Yeah. Like it, it the justification is like if companies are being discriminatory, you go that route, but not with a gun standing there.
00:46:13
Speaker
Yeah. um But I don't think that that's what was happening to begin with. It was just something he could say, right Yeah. Because, you know, afterwards they went and they talked to people who knew him and they were like, why did he do this? And they were like, well, he had said this, that, and the other, right?
00:46:30
Speaker
And that's how they get this information. Because, in you know, in the meantime, he between when he was shot and then shortly thereafter. right He was the only person that died in this hostage incident and he had murdered his girlfriend,
00:46:44
Speaker
pre A week earlier, I guess. And they they do find her body, but it's a couple months later. Yeah, it's a couple months after. March 29th of 1996, I believe. It's just shy of two months after. Right. And so he had told somebody, right? Yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
Yeah. He had told... They describe it as a hint, but I think it's him talking, making threats. He said they receive it. They do get it. Yeah. he They have an informant, but they say that he had hinted about it during the hostage taking.
00:47:20
Speaker
And then they get it informant who comes forward and says, i know where that body is. Right. And that's just interesting to me because it, you know, it was out somewhere and it was buried, right? In plastic and a cardboard box or something. And so I feel like without that information, they wouldn't have found her, right? Yeah.
00:47:40
Speaker
So it's interesting. You would think, I immediately think that John Miranda... I don't imagine him having a whole lot of buddies, right?
00:47:50
Speaker
But I know sometimes people do drugs together as a group activity and that, you know, you're friends with them because of that maybe. Just seems like, and another thing is I think sometimes people don't take what their friend is saying seriously necessarily. Right. And they'll like, you know, he gets shot by police and then they're like, oh, I wonder how Sherry's doing.
00:48:18
Speaker
Right. That's, oh man. It's really sad. I mean, all of that was for absolutely nothing. Yeah. This is, I would say this falls into, it's one of the most interesting things because of him getting locked out of the building and being on the steps and the shotgun being taped to the guy's head. But it's also like, it's, it's really senseless.
00:48:43
Speaker
It's completely senseless because all that ends up happening is his old supervisor got part of his leg blown off and he gets killed. Man, but for that, you know, split second when Harry Lee was like, I'm going to give you the $20,000. He thought, like, this is the answer to all my problems. I guess he did. I'm surprised he didn't kill the wife, honestly. That would have been my fear. Like, maybe maybe he didn't realize what was happening. oh I, yeah.
00:49:15
Speaker
i That might be why he, like grabs everybody and does the whole hostage taking thing is like he's panicking once he realizes the police are going to be involved i don't know though that's like i i don't have a good sense of what he was thinking to begin with so i can't put a lot of logic on him standing out there with a gun duct taped to a guy's head and go yeah he made this perfectly sensible choice because they were going to call the cops Well, the other thing is, like, they're like, oh, Harry Lee initially agreed to the deal. Well, what if he said, yeah, let me just go back to the safe, and then he walks away and calls the police, right? Yeah.
00:49:54
Speaker
That's not him really agreeing to the deal, right? Right. That's him having a distraction. right You're 100% right. I mean, when somebody busts in unexpectedly, right, with a gun,
00:50:11
Speaker
you're going to do whatever they want. You're going to make them think that you're going to do whatever they want. until you can get around it right? Right. So we don't necessarily know that i i don't think that any business person would just hand over $20,000 to a disgruntled employee. I think it was probably a ruse to buy some time or to not have him just open fire. i would buy that, yeah. ah You don't want your employees to be hurt. You don't want to be hurt yourself.
00:50:42
Speaker
Well, right. So you would say, well, yeah, let me see what I can do about that. Cause it, it's not like he's going to have $20,000 in his pocket. Right. right So let me go make those arrangements. Right. And so people are like, oh yeah, he agreed to it. And he was, you know, but he wasn't really going to give him the money. he was just trying to to, you know, figure out what to do.
00:51:05
Speaker
Well, I don't have any, any more on this one. I thought it was an interesting story. um I, It's sad in a lot of ways because of, like, sort of how ridiculous it all is.
Conclusion and Reflection
00:51:21
Speaker
I am glad that most everyone survived here, except the hostage taker himself. Right, me too. That's always good when um everyone survives.
00:51:34
Speaker
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00:51:46
Speaker
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00:53:50
Speaker
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00:54:08
Speaker
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