Police say the suspect was wearing an ankle monitor and was due back at Oʻahu Community Correctional Center that evening.
HONOLULU, Hawaii — A homicide case on Oʻahu is drawing new attention to Hawaii’s work furlough system after police said a prison inmate on a resocialization pass killed his girlfriend, drove her car across the island and stabbed his estranged wife before officers arrested him.
The violence itself drove the initial police response, but the public concern quickly widened beyond two crime scenes. John Nihipali Sr., 55, was already serving prison time when the attacks happened March 5, according to police and corrections officials. By the next day he faced five new felony charges, including murder and escape, and the case had become not only a domestic violence investigation but also a test of what safeguards were in place when he left custody on furlough.
Corrections officials said Nihipali was housed at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and was out on a resocialization furlough pass Thursday. He was wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor, according to police, and was scheduled to return to the facility by 6 p.m. That deadline came after the day’s attacks had already unfolded. Public accounts said he was serving a five-year sentence for second-degree assault, following an earlier 20-year prison term tied to an attempted manslaughter conviction. Local reporting on court records also described an older sexual assault conviction. The background sharpened the scrutiny because Thursday’s surviving victim was identified by police as his estranged wife, the same relationship that had appeared in the history of his earlier violent cases.
The first public sign of trouble came from Kapolei. At about 4:15 p.m., police said, patrol officers were sent to a residence on Kealiʻiahonui Street after a report of a stabbing. Officers arrived to find Nihipali outside the home, armed with a knife and moving toward a responding officer. Police said he ignored repeated commands to drop the weapon, and an officer used a conducted electrical weapon to stop him. Inside that case was another emergency: investigators said Nihipali had gone into the home where his estranged wife lived and stabbed the 53-year-old woman in the neck area. A 30-year-old man inside intervened, and the victim ran to a neighbor’s residence to get help. She was later taken to The Queen’s Medical Center at Punchbowl. Lt. Deena Thoemmes said Friday that she remained hospitalized but was improving.
Only after that arrest did detectives begin to understand that the Kapolei scene was the second attack, not the first. At about 5:30 p.m., officers responding to a medical call on Fern Street in McCully found a 53-year-old woman unresponsive in her apartment. The victim lived there with her 15-year-old son, police said. Detectives later reclassified the case as second-degree murder after finding multiple stab wounds and injuries on her hands that suggested she had tried to defend herself. Family members identified the victim’s boyfriend as Nihipali, the same man already in custody in Kapolei. Investigators said he had entered the apartment with her shortly after 10:30 a.m. and was seen leaving alone shortly after 2:45 p.m.
That sequence turned corrections status into a central fact of the story. Police said Nihipali then took the dead woman’s vehicle and drove to Kapolei, where her car was later recovered. Authorities have not publicly said whether his ankle monitor data has been reviewed in detail, whether any alerts were triggered during the day or whether his movements matched the timing reconstructed from family accounts and surveillance footage. Those gaps matter because the escape charge suggests prosecutors believe he was outside the limits of the furlough program, not simply involved in a new crime while on approved release. So far, public police statements have not laid out the exact boundaries of his pass or described whether corrections staff had contact with him between the morning and his arrest.
The criminal case moved quickly. Police first arrested Nihipali on an attempted murder allegation tied to the Kapolei scene. On March 7, the department said he had been charged with attempted murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, burglary in the first degree and escape in the second degree. He was being held without bail. A first-degree attempted murder count is often used when prosecutors allege an intent to kill more than one person or conduct tied to a broader plan, but the public summaries available from police did not spell out the theory in detail. Nor did they list his next court date. That leaves the next formal step likely to come through court filings, arraignment proceedings or a later hearing where prosecutors detail the evidence behind each count.
For Honolulu police, the case also grew into a wider domestic violence investigation that crossed neighborhoods and exposed two households to the same man in different roles. In McCully, he was the boyfriend entering an apartment in broad daylight. In Kapolei, police said, he was the estranged husband who arrived later in the day and attacked again. The surviving victim’s flight to a neighbor’s home became one of the most important moments in the case, because it created the chain of events that put officers in front of the suspect before the McCully death was even known as a homicide. By the time the two scenes were connected, the evidence trail included surveillance footage, a stolen vehicle, witness accounts and the suspect’s own presence at the second location.
The case stood on Thursday as both a murder prosecution and a measure of how Hawaii handles prison release into the community. Nihipali remained jailed without bail, detectives said the investigation was still active, and the next public test is expected to come when court records or hearings show more clearly how prosecutors say the attacks unfolded and whether the furlough program’s controls failed.
Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.