Thalia Massie, the aristocratic wife of U.S. Navy Lt. Thomas Massie and daughter of Bell Telephone heiress Grace Bell Fortescue, had clearly been beaten severely by person(s) unknown. However, when interviewed by Honolulu police, she accused five local boys of the deed and further, of gang-raping her.

When the defense established a strong alibi that precluded the culpability of the defense, and a Honolulu jury failed to convict the young men, Mrs. Massie's husband and mother took matters into their own hands. They kidnapped and then lynched one of the suspects, a 22-year-old Hawaiian named Joseph Kahahawai.

Lt. Massie and Mrs. Fortescue were indicted by a Honolulu grand jury for murder, and the Bell family retained legendary criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow to handle their defense, in what proved to be his last case.

Nevertheless, and despite public opinion on the mainland being solidly in their corner, Lt. Massie and Mrs. Fortescue were subsequently convicted of manslaughter. However, Hawaii's territorial governor, acting upon the direct orders of President Herbert Hoover -- it should be noted that territorial governors were presidential appointees, and not elected -- immediately commuted their mandatory ten-year prison sentences to one hour.

Lt. Massie and Mrs. Fortescue literally got away with murder.

What made this sordid episode all the more tragic was that it was later determined by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in an officially commissioned investigation that Thalia Massie had lied to Honolulu and Navy authorities about having been beanten and raped by Kahahawai and his friends.

Rather, Honolulu Police Department investigators, speaking off the record, had long suspected that Mrs. Massie had instead been conducting an extra-marital affair with another naval officer who was the prominent son of an Alabama congressman, and that she was beaten by that officer when she threatened to expose him upon his attempt to break off the relationship.

As I said, vigilanteism is not the answer. In that regard, we would be wise to always heed the words of former Hawaii Gov. Wallace Farrington, who wrote contemporaneously to the Massie Affair in March 1932:

"The question that at present confronts [the citizens of Honolulu] -- a question fraught with tremendous consequences -- must now be answered. Some shallow-minded people will doubtless find superficial grounds for condoning [the murder of Kahahawai], but what will the answer of the community be?  We are now called upon to decide is whether we are for or against the disgrace of lynch law. ... If one person is to have the privilege of redressing his own wrongs others must, of course, be accorded the same privilege."

Convicted murderers get released and too often murder again.

Convicted murderers have escaped and murdered again.