LYNDA: Cathy and Albert's relationship seemed perfect.
He's a police officer, upstanding citizen in
our community.
It seemed like a perfect family.
I think it was exactly what she
had wanted in her vision of her family.
[all speaking]
No one would have guessed
what was happening behind closed doors
and just the darkness that I saw when he looked at her.
It was, like, unraveling even more, and he was changing
even more.
Spiraling out of control.
SHANNON: This person is a monster.
There was this feeling inside of me, telling me
that someone was gonna die.
[theme music playing]
NARRATOR: It's July 1995 on Big Island, Hawaii.
[Cathy speaking]
NARRATOR: 36-year-old Cathy Pacheco films her husband,
Albert, as he landscapes their property in Waimea.
[Cathy speaking]
I'm Cathy's oldest daughter from her
first marriage to my father, Arnold.
At that point, my dad had custody of me,
so I would go and visit my mom on the weekends, and I'd spend
holidays with her and my stepdad, Albert.
It was pretty amazing to live, um, in that part
of Waimea and on the Big Island and in that home.
[pig squealing]
That's my sister, Rebecca.
She was about nine years old in this video.
REBECCA: Don't run!
SHANNON: That was her pet pig, Sarah,
and she really loved that pig.
She would talk to her animals.
She would just be outside all day playing with her animals.
It was really cute.
And there's my sister, Naomi.
NARRATOR: The Pachecos moved from Oahu to Big Island
five years ago.
NARRATOR: They record a video message to
the friends they left behind.
NARRATOR: The Pachecos are committed to a rural lifestyle.
Come back!
SHANNON: It was always a dream of my mom and Albert's
to have a really big property and have different animals.
My stepdad was a police officer.
I believe he was a patrol officer.
And, at that point, my stepdad, Albert, was
just the primary, um, provider for the family.
My mom stopped working pretty much as
soon as they moved to the Big Island.
She stayed home and she just took care of the kids.
Um, at that time, she was also home schooling
Naomi and Rebecca, my two sisters.
NARRATOR: Cathy was born in Texas in January 1959
to a sergeant in the U.S. Army and a Japanese mother.
SHANNON: My grandma's name was Teruko.
She was from Japan, and my grandfather's name
was Eugene Yuzell.
They came to Hawaii when my mom was a baby
but split up when she was about seven years old.
NARRATOR: Cathy goes to live with her mother,
who runs a successful Japanese restaurant.
BRENDA: Cathy's mom was a hard worker.
She woke up early in the morning, two o'clock,
went to work, prepared all the food,
sold the food in her restaurant,
cleaned up every single day that way.
I met Cathy when we were nine years old.
She became my best friend immediately.
We did everything together.
We went to the beach, because that's what you do in Hawaii,
and, of course, when we were older and there was a car,
it was unlimited -- it was fun, it was a fun time.
NARRATOR: Cathy moves out of her mom's house aged 18.
She marries 31-year-old Arnold Robyn soon after.
Cathy met Arnold in 1977.
That's actually the year that we graduated.
He was much older than her, and he had a nice Corvette,
and he was a good-looking guy, and it was a roller coaster.
NARRATOR: Cathy gives birth to Shannon in August 1978,
but her and Arnold's relationship ends in divorce
shortly after Shannon's arrival.
After Cathy and Arnold got divorced,
we started hanging out again together.
Wherever we went out, the guys liked her.
She was beautiful, and it was fun being
with her -- she would catch the guys.
NARRATOR: A few years on from her divorce from Arnold,
Cathy meets Albert in Waikiki.
SHANNON: My mom and Albert met during a traffic stop.
Albert was a patrol officer at the time,
and he saw her at a light and followed them.
My mom was with her best friend, Brenda, and I think
he pulled them over, and he got my mom's phone number.
Cathy quickly falls for the young police officer.
I think what my mom saw in Albert was a man who looked
very stable, who had a pretty reputable job.
He was also a born-again Christian.
So she saw pretty solid foundation in him.
BRENDA: Cathy and Albert got married.
Now she had a husband,
she had a stable life, and I was happy for her.
NARRATOR: Cathy gives birth to daughter,
Naomi, in 1984.
Sister, Rebecca, arrives a year later.
Eight-year-old Shannon moves in
to live with her mom and stepdad in 1986.
Cathy wants to earn and contribute
to the family finances.
She secures a job in sales for a medical supply company.
She worked for a company called ZEE Medical,
and she did really well at that job.
I think my mom really did well at selling,
because she was such a relatable person.
She was always the happiest when she was
connecting with people or talking with people.
But it really irritated my stepdad a lot.
He didn't like the fact that she worked, and then I think
it really bothered him that she was making more money
than him.
NARRATOR: Albert wants Cathy to stay at home
to raise their children.
In 1991, he convinces her to quit her job near
Honolulu and move to a rural lifestyle on Big Island.
Teenage daughter, Shannon, decides to stay on Oahu.
SHANNON: I would keep in touch with my mom.
Um, I would call her pretty much every day or every week.
I would go back to visit, but it wasn't very often.
NARRATOR: Four years after the move, Cathy
and Albert welcome a new baby boy, Caleb,
and the family settles into
a traditional and religious family life.
NARRATOR: The Pachecos attend
the First Baptist Church of Waimea.
It's a tight-knit Christian community.
They were very active in their church.
I was told that Albert would, um,
take over -- if the pastor
couldn't do a service,
that he would actually take over the service.
Whenever I visited, we started talking about the Bible, and he
ended up bringing it out and reading some verses to me.
Albert was very religious.
[all speaking]
MAN: Amen!
At church, the Pachecos meet
fellow home schooler, Kealoha Nearman.
BRENDA: Cathy was very approachable.
People gravitated towards her.
She had just a big personality.
KEALOHA: She had this great idea
that she wanted to put the play on,
because we had so many kids at our church at the time,
and so Cathy had it figured out, and we
all worked together, and she orchestrated and directed, uh,
the Christmas play.
[Cathy speaking]
That's just how she is.
She's a taskmaster.
We probably put on about five of those shows on
one weekend. [laughs]
I think that's Cathy in a nutshell.
I don't know if it had something to do with her sales background,
but it was definitely part of who she was.
She made things happen. She was a spark plug.
I mean, we -- we loved the Pachecos, and, you know,
they were close with us -- they seemed real happy.
They were enjoying life.
But, of course, she never shared all the other
parts of it that maybe were happening behind the scenes.
Whatever he was going through,
it was big, huge.
But you never thought it would come to anything violent.
[all singing] Happy birthday, dear Isaac.
February 3rd, 1997.
Uh, it was my son Isaac's birthday.
[all singing]
As usual, everybody came, the Pachecos and all
of our friends that we were -- play with.
[woman speaking]
KEALOHA: We had the Pachecos there,
Albert in his uniform.
It was not unusual to have him show
up in his police uniform to join us
if it's the end of the watch.
Albert was a very
neighborhood policeman.
He took his job very seriously, but I think
it wasn't his sole identity.
I believe he saw himself as a father and a husband.
NARRATOR: The Pachecos are, by now,
settled into life on Big Island,
and they decide to grow their family further.
KEALOHA: It looks like Cathy could be
pregnant with Josiah at this point.
NARRATOR: Friends gather to celebrate the imminent arrival
of Cathy and Albert's fourth child together.
[indistinct exclamation]
KEALOHA: This is Josiah's baby shower.
I think she was feeling very large.
I had little boys, and so it was exciting to know that our
good friends were gonna have another
little partner in crime.
[man speaking indistinctly]
Josiah arrived in August of 1997
to complete that little family that we were excited for.
I think it was exactly what she had wanted and how it all
was meant to be,
uh, in her vision of her family.
NARRATOR: But the Pachecos are struggling financially,
and the new arrival ramps up
the pressure on the family's bank balance.
I believe they had a balloon mortgage on
their house, and the mortgage was going up.
And at the time, my mom was not working.
So they were only living on one income,
which was my stepdad's income.
Financially, they were not doing well,
and it was just really affecting him emotionally.
DON: I was the patrol lieutenant for the South Kohala District
of the Hawaii County Police Department,
and I knew Detective Pacheco because he had worked in patrol
with me for a short period of time.
One day, I thought something was wrong, because
I gave him an assignment, and he refused,
which was really out of character for him.
So I just told him, well,
we're gonna have to address this with disciplinary action.
He asked if he could talk to the captain.
A little while later,
I was asked to come in to the captain's office,
and I saw that Albert was very emotional,
and he shook my hand and asked for forgiveness and...
I figured, you know, he was probably
under a lot of pressure from something.
I didn't know what, because I wasn't
able to talk to him about it.
NARRATOR: In 1999, the Pacheco family relocates to
a cheaper rental home in Kona to save money.
Soon after, Cathy's 21-year-old daughter,
Shannon, decides to move closer to her mom.
My mom was really excited about me moving back to
the Big Island, and we did a lot of things together.
My mom and Albert joined
a church called Solid Rock Ministries in Kona.
It was a lot different from
the church that they were at in Waimea.
The programs were bigger.
My mom and Albert were always very involved in the church.
They always wanted to volunteer.
I decided to join along with my mom and Albert.
I think Albert was perceived in
church as the pinnacle of morality.
He would be asked by church members to go out and preach.
NARRATOR: A few months after the Pachecos moved to Kona,
Cathy enrolls her four children in
school for the first time, and she goes back to work to help
the family finances.
SHANNON: My mom actually got her real estate license,
and she started working at Clark Realty.
[man speaking]
[Cathy speaking]
In this video, she's just kind of showcasing the property.
She's the one behind the camera.
She's super happy, you know.
It's like what she always wanted to do.
She was doing pretty good for the first year.
My mom was so successful at this job in real estate
that her broker was gonna name her rookie of the year.
As soon as my mom started selling real estate and she
started, um, receiving her commission checks,
she completely changed -- her style changed,
she was putting on makeup, keeping up with trends.
Her success was helping them financially,
but Albert was just not having it
with my mom and her success.
She was already, like, shifting
her mindset to becoming more independent.
He really wanted to control my mom.
He was the authority of the house.
It was causing a huge meltdown for him personally.
It was driving him insane.
NARRATOR: Cathy Pacheco works long hours as a realtor.
She leans on her friend, Kealoha Nearman, to
look after her sons when she's away from home.
Oftentimes, she would be called to do something for work,
and I would
pick the boys up from school, and Albert would often come to
pick them up,
and sometimes, we would both commiserate
about what's going on, you know?
And are you okay?
It was never a problem for me to watch them,
but I think what starts to show is
why do I need to watch them? Why can't mom be here?
Albert, I think, was getting frustrated,
because he felt their priorities,
I think, were not lining up as they had previous.
He was always saying that he was doing everything for
the boys and that my mom wasn't around
to help him and that he felt like she didn't love him
anymore and she didn't love the family.
I actually was upset at my mom for a little while,
because I thought she was ignoring him,
and I thought she was making her job more important
than her marriage and her kids at one point.
NARRATOR: Around the time Cathy's career takes off,
she discovers a passion for water sports.
I really got to know Cathy
in March of 2001.
We started learning how to paddle
canoe in Waikoloa Together.
It was twice a week that we would practice at the water.
And then as the season ramped up,
we would have races on Saturday.
SHANNON: Albert was really concerned
about the after parties
that paddlers would have, because it
was a common thing that after you do a regatta that, you know,
you socialize, and there's a lot of guys that are walking
around with no T-shirts.
They're super athletic and fit,
and my stepdad didn't like it.
NARRATOR: The Pachecos move from Kona to Waikoloa in June 2001.
The beachside location offers a better
work-life balance for the whole family.
Cathy and Albert's move to Waikoloa was a happy medium.
It afforded Albert a closer place to drive to Kona.
The girls could catch the bus to go to the school in Kona,
and then with Cathy working as a realtor all over the place,
it was a nice, central place for their life.
NARRATOR: Cathy and Albert start a Bible group
with their friend, Lynda, after their move to Waikoloa.
LYNDA: Cathy was never a judgmental person.
Sometimes you meet some, you know,
quote unquote Christians that are gonna shame you into things
or...that was never her style.
Albert was a legalistic Christian.
You know, "This is the scriptures and this is
what it says and there's no room for interpretation."
There was no room for grace.
I remember they had gotten in some type of disagreement,
maybe differences of opinion at one of the Bible studies.
And...
it was the way he looked at her,
and just the darkness that I saw.
Wow, what is that?
Cathy and I addressed it later,
and she slowly started to confide.
Albert would open up the Bible to a certain verse that
he wanted her to see and put it right by her purse.
Or he'd text message a verse
shaming you into whatever he felt you might be doing wrong.
Cathy was still trying to do everything that
I think she felt she was supposed to do,
needed to do, he wanted her to do.
But what was bothering Albert was lack of control.
Her career is going faster, and she was doing
an outside activity that would bring her in contact
with other individuals.
There was a church retreat that
Albert really wanted her to attend.
But we had paddling to go to,
so Cathy paddled half the day,
and then she went up to the retreat,
because that's what Albert really wanted her to do.
I remember she said she didn't want to spend the night,
and when she was trying to leave,
he was physically restraining her from leaving,
which then caused scratches on her, and I remember
her just kind of showing me what he had done.
I think it's just one of these moments where you
realize, wow, this is really what's happening.
I think it just was escalating,
spiraling out of control.
NARRATOR: One evening in summer 2001,
Cathy and her colleagues
enjoy after-work drinks at a hotel in Kona.
My mom's drinking was a casual
sort of normal after work,
I'm having a glass of wine or having
some beers with my friends kind of a thing.
Albert was stalking her already at that point,
so he had followed her.
Albert had a spare set of my mom's van keys,
and he took her van and moved it and hid it.
He watched her walk out of the hotel.
NARRATOR: One of Cathy's coworkers is with her
when she exits the lobby.
Albert was already, you know,
distraught and spiraling out of control.
But I think this incident was the straw that broke
the camel's back, and so when she
walked out with whoever she was with,
she was trying to find her van, and she couldn't find it.
Albert confronted her, and they got into a fight.
After that incident, my stepdad was going around
and telling certain people that she was moving
away from God, because she decided
that she wanted to drink.
Things had gotten to a point where she knew
something had to change.
NARRATOR: Over the Christmas holidays,
Cathy moves in with her friend, Lynda.
Albert was just really having
a hard time dealing with the separation.
There were times when we would look out, and there would
be Albert, just driving super slowly by the house
and just glaring.
It's just such darkness that I would see in him.
SHANNON: It was, like, unraveling even more,
and he was changing even more.
There was this feeling inside of me,
telling me that someone was gonna die.
It was like a normal day.
My mom was showing property that day, and she's
driving on this highway to get home back to Waikoloa.
She called Rebecca to let Rebecca know
that she was gonna be home soon.
My mom gets up to, like, one block away from their home,
and my stepdad is right behind her.
She can see him in her rearview mirror,
and she's telling Rebecca, "I don't know what he's doing.
But, oh, my gosh, Rebecca, I'm scared."
She's just screaming at him.
"No Albert, what about the kids?"
And then, at that point, the phone went blank.
WAYNE: I'd finished my work for the day,
and I was returning home from finishing a karate class.
I just turned left into my driveway,
and as I get close, it looks like there's been an accident.
One vehicle has its left front tire up against the curb.
It looks like it's sort of crashed.
And there was another vehicle just adjacent to it.
I'd pull into my driveway and pop out,
just start walking over, because I see a man
standing there.
One of the first things he said
to me was, "Shots have been fired.
There's no point in looking in there," and I said,
"Is there someone in there?"
And he said, "Yes, I'm a police officer."
I could feel there was a very high level of tension
or electricity in the air, but he seemed extremely calm.
I sort of figured he's probably
chased some criminal down and shot them.
So I said to him, "You were just doing your job, man."
He didn't say anything other than, "I can't answer
"for legal reasons.
The police will be arriving soon."
NARRATOR: 911 calls flood into police central dispatch.
OPERATOR: 911 emergency.
DAWN: It was probably, like, around 6:57
when I called 911 the first time.
I heard, like, these cars come screeching around the corner.
When I first saw the vehicles,
I mean, I thought it was maybe a road rage.
I see the van coming.
I see the dark vehicle behind it.
The darker vehicle hits the righthand back side of the van.
Then that person got out of the vehicle,
walked up to the driver's side, and then that's when I heard
gunshots.
[gunshots blasting]
Probably about eight or 10 rounds to the driver's side.
The person went back to the vehicle and I guess reloaded
and then went back to the driver's side and shot again,
about another four to six shots,
and that's when I called 911 again.
[gunshot blasts]
They said there's a police officer on the scene already.
So at that point, I wasn't sure if it was
a suspect that this person was chasing
or -- or what was going on.
I was the patrol lieutenant on duty.
I was just walking in the front door
of the police station
when I heard something coming over dispatch.
"1116, it's me."
I knew immediately it was Albert Pacheco.
That's his badge number.
He said that his alpha was DOA
and to call CIS,
which is the Criminal Investigation Section.
Alpha is your -- your wife or your spouse,
and DOA means dead on arrival.
Detective Pacheco advised me that he
had just shot and killed his wife
and that he was waiting for us.
You have a fellow officer that's gone over the line,
and you have a lot of firearms capability with this person.
[siren wailing]
My first thought was, I've got to get
down there and make sure that nothing else happens.
I went as fast as I could.
We approached and asked him to lay prone on the ground
and put his palms up.
He was very cooperative,
and we immediately secured him without incident.
After the initial arrest,
the Criminal Investigation Section came in and secured
the scene to investigate it.
The driver's side window had been broken,
and there was glass all over,
and I immediately went over to see if
there was any life left in the victim.
Cathy Pacheco was leaning towards
the passenger seat a little bit,
and I brushed the hair back so
that I could get a carotid pulse, and...
there were many holes
in the side of her face
and her neck and chest, and, uh...
it was very obvious that --
I mean, there were so many that
there was no way she could be alive.
There were empty nine-millimeter casings found on the pavement.
She had been shot 15 times.
He had used everything that he could.
Then he called and
revealed to us what he had done.
NARRATOR: Lieutenant Watson drives Albert Pacheco
to the station for questioning.
I returned him to the South Kohala District Station
to wait for an interview
by the Criminal Investigation Section.
I told him to please be quiet,
because he hadn't been advised of his rights.
He was sweating.
He wasn't remorseful.
Detective Pacheco was not the same person
that I had known.
SHANNON: At the time, um,
I was working in Waikoloa, and a family member had come
down to the store saying, "Shannon,
"we have to go right now.
"Albert and your mom got into a fight,
and -- and Albert shot your mom."
The police were at my house.
The entire cul-de-sac was just filled with police cars.
And before I even got out of the car,
I just remember saying, "Is she alive?"
And the police officer just said...
"She's not."
And that was it.
Your mind goes into this space where
it's like this couldn't have possibly been real.
These are the things that you see on TV, like crimes that are
committed by other people, but not your own family.
NARRATOR: On January 6th, 2002,
Hawaii County Police charge Albert Pacheco
with the second-degree murder of his wife, Cathy.
Detectives interview the couple's children to
unearth clues that could explain
why Albert shot her 14 times.
I think people believed that he was
something that he really actually wasn't.
I remember telling the police officer interviewing me,
"I believe Albert was completely capable of the crime,
because he pulled a gun on my mom before."
My mom's life could have been saved so many times.
They had no idea that he was a monster.
NARRATOR: Shannon tells investigators about the abuse
she saw her stepfather, Albert,
inflict on her mom, Cathy.
DON: Shannon revealed some things that had occurred
that would be surprising to anybody,
and it told the depth of the...
controlling that occurred.
NARRATOR: Shannon recounts an incident she witnessed
when she lived with Cathy and Albert 14 years earlier.
SHANNON: I was in the third grade.
We came home from the Bible study,
and I just remember my mom saying,
"Shannon, go get ready for bed."
And I peeked at my mom and Albert, and I just remember
he was in his police uniform,
and he was, like, staring at her.
He gets his gun out, and he's holding it right at my mom.
I literally ran under the gun, and I said,
"Please don't shoot her. Please don't kill her."
And my mom said, "Shannon, run."
NARRATOR: Shannon returns to the house a few hours later.
SHANNON: Albert had just trashed the entire house.
Like, he ripped everything apart.
There was pictures of us all over
the floor in pieces and ripped up.
I had to go to school the next day,
this little girl in the third grade.
I had to just, like, go to school
like nothing ever happened.
My mom told me, "Shannon, You can't tell anybody
"that this happened, because, you know,
"Albert's gonna lose his job, and then we won't have a place
to live."
And the only way that I can make sense of any of
it is the fact that my stepdad
indoctrinated my mom so heavily.
She believed everything that he said.
SHANNON: For all of those years,
everything was about following the Bible, and your husband is
the king and then your children.
It was always, like, excuses for him
and just trying to be a good wife.
NARRATOR: Other witnesses describe to investigators
evidence of Albert's controlling behavior
in the lead up to Cathy's murder.
LYNDA: I relayed what she had told me to the police officers,
and I tried to fill in the cracks
that they were missing.
I told him about the time that Cathy went on a church retreat
and seeing scratches on her back
as well as bruises on her arm.
And I told the police about his stalking behavior.
By the time that Christmas came of that year,
she was feeling very unsafe.
The facade was gone.
It wasn't the Bible study Albert.
NARRATOR: Albert Pacheco attends his arraignment
on January 7th, 2002.
He pleads not guilty by reason of mental illness.
You just shake your head and you go, really?
The police report is there. You know what happened.
You're gonna plead not guilty?
That was very distressing, thinking that
there was gonna be this trial.
Everyone's gonna have to go in and relive it.
The only positive was that eventually
that he changed his plea to guilty.
NARRATOR: At a hearing on June 29th, 2004,
witnesses describe to the court
the events that led to Cathy's murder.
They tell how Cathy reported to
friends that she was afraid of Albert,
and that she decided to separate from him
over New Year 2002.
Albert reacts badly to this loss of control,
and the situation turns deadly on January 4th.
DON: Detective Pacheco was on the phone
earlier in the day with Cathy.
She was upset with him and told him that she was
pretty much done with him and hung up the phone on him.
And that evidently incensed him to
the point where he was out hunting for her.
NARRATOR: Albert rams Cathy's car off the road.
He then executes her
[gunshots blasting]
in front of witnesses before he surrenders to police.
DON: He wasn't remorseful.
He was just trying to talk himself into that
he did the right thing.
And according to God's law or the Bible,
his wife was unfaithful, and he had every right to
do that, which was absolutely disgusting.
A very angry, disillusioned
out-of-control person.
On August 16th, 2004, a Big Island judge sentences
Albert Pacheco to life in prison
with the possibility of parole for Cathy's murder.
He must serve a minimum of 40 years.
BRENDA: It's been 20 years,
but I have dreams, and she's in it.
And then I wake up, and I feel, like, so happy.
It's like I got to spend time with her, you know?
I miss her.
I do.
And I tell her that all the time.
[shouting indistinctly]
Cathy was a sister
that I met
that, um,
was definitely someone that, um,
you appreciate a friendship like that.
What I miss most about Cathy is
just spending time out on the water.
We actually spread Cathy's ashes from a canoe.
The kids were there, and we paddled out,
and we spread her ashes out there.
That moment was beautiful.
My mom leaves behind a great legacy of friendship.
She was a special person.
I miss my mom, and just --
I miss what we could have had.