A 33-year-old former Kailua-Kona man was sentenced Tuesday in Arkansas to life without the possibility of parole plus 22 years for murdering and dismembering his former girlfriend in 2022.

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According to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette newspaper in Fayetteville, Kacey Kawika Jennings — a Kealakehe High School graduate — was found guilty of capital murder, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and theft of property for the shotgun slaying of 28-year-old Allison Maria Castro, who also graduated from Kealakehe.

The Washington County Circuit Court jury had the option of sentencing Jennings to death, but chose to spare his life. They also levied a $30,000 fine as part of the sentence.

Castro’s mother told reporters after Jennings was sentenced that her daughter moved to Arkansas to become a nurse, and praised the police and prosecutors who worked on her daughter’s case.

“This could not have happened without the cooperation of all the teams that came together to give us what we have now, which is justice,” Michelle Tomas told KSFM-TV in Fort Smith, Ark. ” The community is safer because one monster is gone.”

Prosecutors told jurors that on Aug. 19, 2022, Jennings used a shotgun he bought about two months earlier to shoot Castro — who reportedly was ending her relationship with him — in the chest and head, according to the Democrat Gazette. The shooting took place in the apartment they had shared.

Jennings dismembered the body and disposed of its parts and the shotgun in Beaver Lake, a man-made reservoir in the Ozark Mountains.

According to the Arkansas newspaper, prosecutors said Jennings sold Castro’s belongings, used her credit card and cash, cleaned up the apartment where she was killed and afterward used her phone to send messages to her mother and others.

Police responded on Sept. 19, 2022, to a Fayetteville residence to find Jennings in the throes of an apparent drug overdose, according to the Democrat Gazette. Officers reportedly found documents at the site that indicated Jennings might have killed Castro and disposed of her body.

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Jennings was arrested on Sept. 26, 2022, upon his release from a local medical facility, the newspaper said. He reportedly took police on the route he used to discard various body parts and the gun.

According to the newspaper, fishermen found Castro’s lower legs floating in Beaver Lake. Other body parts haven’t been recovered.

After the sentencing, Tomas told Arkansas reporters she had been back 30 times searching for her daughter’s remains.

“Allie’s still here. I don’t know if y’all noticed but they kept mentioning that she wasn’t all recovered, so you’ll see me out on the lake and in the forest continuing to search, do what I can,” she said.

Referring to “tons of people in Hawaii that do miss her,” Tomas said finding her daughter’s remains is important, not just to the family, but as a Hawaiian cultural matter.

“We call bones ‘iwi.’ Iwi is important,” she said. “It’s not something to be discarded or treated lightly. And that’s what happened to Allie.

“And in her honor, I need to continue my search because bones hold mana. Mana is your power, and that’s not something to be thrown away or discarded.”

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Email John Burnett at [email protected].