Amidst an outpouring of grief for the three elderly male victims of last week’s triple homicide in Puna, friends and family have also shared stories of the kupuna from happier times.

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Amidst an outpouring of grief for the three elderly male victims of last week’s triple homicide in Puna, friends and family have also shared stories of the kupuna from happier times.

Hawaii Police Department suspects Jacob “Jake” Daniel Baker of killing Robert Shine, 69, Chitta Morse, 79, and John Carse, 69, over the course of Monday and Tuesday in a spree of seemingly random violence in Kapoho and Kalapana.

Police reported at 2:45 p.m. Thursday that they had arrested Baker — a Pahoa resident — “without incident” along Kalapana-Kapoho Road near the village of Kaimu.

Details about the victims’ causes of death are still forthcoming, but preliminary reports from autopsies performed on Wednesday suggest Shine died of strangulation, while Morse reportedly died as a result of “blunt-force trauma.” Police said Carse died from “sharp-force trauma” after suffering a slash wound to his neck.

Bob Shine’s daughter Anon Shine lives in Kailua-Kona and is a holistic chef running her own private catering business.

“Honestly, I’m still in shock,” she said Friday. “I’ve only cried a couple of times, because it’s just still sinking in for me — the reality of it. But it’s coming in waves, and (I’m) just taking it one day at a time. So, it’s actually been great to talk about him and hear from people who knew him.”

She remembered her father as an artist, deep thinker and naturalist who was a smiling pillar of his community.

“He was such an amazing poet and scholar of metaphysics,” she said. “And, you know, a real spiritual counselor to a lot of people. I’ve been getting a lot of messages from people saying how he helped them with his wisdom and how well-read he was. He was definitely a philosopher.”

She said her father also loved live music with a passion, and always could be found on the dance floor at concerts and parties in the neighborhood.

“He was such a fan of music, and especially guitar playing and virtuoso guitar playing,” she said. “He just really loved to come together around his love of music. I’m getting so many messages about my dad, (about) what a special person he was to so many people, especially local musicians … reaching out and saying, ‘Bob was our biggest fan, he was always at our events supporting us, and just telling us how much he appreciated our talent,’ and putting on community events to try to showcase local music.”

Describing him as “walking his talk,” she said he chose to live a simple, humble life in the jungle with few material possessions in an effort to live deliberately and commune with nature.

“It wasn’t easy or comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s what he really believed in, and he was really walking that talk,” she said.

She recalled a story about how years ago his love of dance once got him scouted by a modern dance company that asked him to come perform with them.

“Even though he had no formal training as a dancer, he just had such a love and exuberance for music, and he was a really agile guy, too, really healthy and agile,” she said. “And he was just such an amazing dancer, really one of a kind with his dance moves.”

She said she’s familiar with the community of Papaya Farms Road where her father lived, describing it as a quiet neighborhood of farmers, homesteaders and alternative-lifestyle types.

“That’s the scary nature of the whole thing, you know, trying to live in community and find peace and healing, but letting that leave you open to having people who are this unwell in your community,” she said, referring to Baker. “It’s just really, really tragic.”

Last week’s gruesome events, she said, have tarnished such a close-knit and presumably safe neighborhood with common stereotypes of Puna District.

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“It’s all about love and acceptance and trying to live more peacefully than mainstream society and be giving and community-minded,” she said about the Papaya Farms Road area. “So, that’s another reason I’ve been speaking out, because I want people to know what the community is really like down there. You know, you hear so much like, ‘oh, there’s just so much crime in Puna,’ like it’s just written off that it’s acceptable almost, or expected, when you hear people talking about it, and it’s just really not the case.”

A GoFundMe page titled “Support for Shine Ohana” has been started for Shine’s family to offset the cost of memorial services and immediate family expenses. As of Friday afternoon, nearly $10,000 had been donated to the fundraiser.

Railroad Avenue resident Kevin Fray lives a quarter-mile up the road from where Shine’s body was found. Fray said he was a close friend of Morse, who leased land on Noni Farms Road to him and his wife to raise livestock several years ago.

“He was super happy and supportive,” Fray said about Morse. “We leased that land and put cows there and lived there and were able to be selling milk in the neighborhood.”

Like Shine, Morse was a minimalist who lived a laid-back, stress-free lifestyle growing fruit and working on homestead projects.

“He was just a nice guy … he’s been here for decades, and he’ll definitely be missed,” Fray said. “He was quite the character, but he definitely brought a lot of character to our region in a very beautiful way. He was very chill, he was very — I guess you could say — wealthy, just in the sense of leisure time to be relaxed, to not feel pressured and rushed and a lot of those traits that we kind of make ourselves do.”

He said Morse “would always invite us over to go in the hot tub he made,” and served as an inspiration for young farmers and homesteaders.

“I could understand the vibe as just sort of refreshing, just seeing the simplicity in which he lived and what’s possible,” Fray said. “I actually kind of describe myself as like part-Chitta in the very earthy ways — he definitely left an impression on me.”

He said Morse was devoutly committed to his raw food diet, and strived to be self-sufficient.

“Shoot, he wouldn’t go to Pahoa for months at a time — not Hilo, not even Pahoa,” he said. “He had what he needed all right here.”

“He was definitely very caring,” Fray added. “And he would push his agenda — he was very into the conspiracies and ‘raw food is the way,’ and sometimes it was a little like, ‘alright, Chitta, it kind of sounds like you’re criticising me,’ but it was all like out of care.”

Another Papaya Farms Road resident, Tom — who declined to give his last name for this story — is an old friend of John Carse, fondly recalling surfing with him at Pohoiki Bay decades ago. Tom moved to Puna in 1972, and said Carse was “one of the first people I ran into.”

“He was really involved in community awareness, but he was the type of guy who kinda stayed on the outside,” Tom said. “He had a lot of ideas he tried to promote at meetings and other stuff like that.”

Tom said he was shocked to hear about Carse considering how easygoing and friendly he was.

“He was very, very community-centered and (had a) very benign personality,” he said. “Very gentle, sweet and, you know, the last person you’d think something like this would happen (to), because he would not have given anybody a hard time or whatever. He was very compassionate.”

Tom recalled that living through the 1990 Kaimu lava flow drove Carse to get more involved in his community. This commitment was reignited again nearly 30 years later during the 2018 Kilauea eruption where he would frequent resilience events like Revitalize Puna — a community-driven initiative supporting the long-term recovery of the area with live music, food and art vendors and fundraising efforts.

“That flow — that got him really motivated in the community as far as trying to figure out what’s the best thing to do. That’s what I remember,” Tom said about Carse’s reaction to the Kaimu flow. “So, when we had events like Revitalize Puna or any of those things, he would always show up. He was a supporter in that way, and that’s basically where I’d see him the most.”

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Email Stefan Verbano at [email protected].