The court-appointed attorney for a 57-year-old Pahoa man accused of killing his wife and two children eight years ago has been granted a private investigator, at taxpayers’ expense, to ascertain the history of mental health in his client’s family.
Hilo Circuit Judge Henry Nakamoto on Friday granted Stanton Oshiro’s request to retain the investigator. Oshiro represents John Ali Hoffman, who is facing first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder for the fatal shootings of his 40-year-old wife, Aracely Hoffman, and their children, 10-year-old Clara Hoffman and 7-year-old John “Junior” Hoffman, in the family’s Leilani Estates home.
Officers responding to a call about a disturbance at the Hoffmans’ Moku Street home in the early morning hours of May 6, 2016, reportedly stopped Hoffman for driving without headlights on as he was allegedly leaving the scene. Police say a handgun was in the car, within Hoffman’s reach.
Officers also opened the trunk after allegedly seeing blood dripping from it and found the body of Aracely Hoffman. The two children’s bodies were found in the house.
Hoffman also is charged with use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony and illegal storage of a handgun.
Friday’s court date was originally scheduled as a mental fitness hearing, but Nakamoto granted Oshiro a delay until Sept. 6 for “further proceedings.” The judge said if Oshiro obtains the information he is seeking before then, he can submit it to the court and the three mental health professionals tasked with determining Hoffman’s fitness to stand trial.
Hoffman was originally found fit to stand trial in February 2017, but has gone through multiple rounds of fitness proceedings since after engaging in bizarre courtroom behavior.
He accused at least one judge, now retired, of bias against him and demanded, unsuccessfully, that the judge recuse himself from the case. On Aug. 14, 2017, Hoffman said in open court the same judge and another judge, who’s also since retired, and a private attorney “have slaved me and my family for the benefit of another man.”
Hoffman also is charged with second-degree assault for an alleged November 2017 jailhouse attack on a Hawaii Community Correctional Center guard, identified in court documents as Bryson Crivello. That case remains open in Hilo Circuit Court.
Aracely Urruela, originally from El Salvador, came to Hawaii 10 years prior to meeting, marrying and having children with Hoffman.
“She wanted to have a better life, to move ahead, to advance her family, to improve their lot in life,” Reyna Urruela Pineda, Aracely Hoffman’s mother, told the Tribune-Herald on May 10, 2016, through an interpreter, Ramón Manuel Figueroa-Centeno, a family friend. “She was very focused on her children and their future. She wanted Clara to go to college. She was worried for her son because Junior was a victim of (rat) lungworm disease. But she was always, as much as she could, as much as she was allowed, trying to improve the lot of their lives, including that of her husband.”
The slain woman’s brother, Tito Monroy Urruela, said his sister’s purpose “was to always to help.”
“She worked to help the family,” he said, partially in Spanish and partially in English. “She worked like the men work, doing men’s kind of jobs. She had no vices. She never had an ill word for anybody. She was concerned about her whole family, including her husband, all the time.
“She was a complete innocent.”
Rose Bautista, a county immigration attorney, knew Aracely Urruela before she married Hoffman in 2008, and had tried, without success, to gain permanent alien resident status for the woman.
“She was the sweetest, sweetest person, always with a smile,” Bautista said, also on May 10, 2016. “And that’s the sad thing. Because I knew her situation, I knew her pain, but she hid it so well. She had this really pleasant smile, but because I could see through that, it was more of a painful smile.”
Hoffman faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole if convicted of first-degree murder, a charge that was filed because of multiple victims. The second-degree murder charges all carry a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole upon conviction.
Use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony is a Class A felony with a potential 20-year prison term, while the other firearms charge is a Class B felony with a possible 10-year prison sentence.
The second-degree assault charge for the alleged attack on the guard is a Class C felony with a potential five-year prison term.
Hoffman remains in custody at HCCC in lieu of an aggregate $2.085 million bail.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
