John Dunatov and his associates in Lihu‘e had a lot on their minds early in the morning on Oct. 22.
Dunatov is the owner of Phoenix International, Inc., a construction company that has offices at Harbor Mall in Nawiliwili and in Scottsdale, Ariz.
He said he was just about to board a flight to West Maui for a project meeting, when he received a distressing phone call from his daughter, Doris, in Scottsdale.
According to Dunatov, his daughter, who runs his Phoenix office, received an ominous-looking box dripping a strange liquid.
The box had Doris’ name and address on it in addition to his name as sender. The word “urgent” was stamped across the top of the box.
Seeing there was no other shipping label on the box, Doris was hesitant about opening the package. She called her father who told her to immediately call the police in Scottsdale.
The police opened the strange box and discovered four bloody ram heads, two sheep skins and a bag of sheep innards wrapped in newspaper.
Horrified by the discovery, Doris called her father. He began an investigation on Kaua‘i, bringing in the Kaua‘i Police Department as well as the FBI.
“Immediately, I thought it was someone trying to scare me and make me leave the island,” Dunatov said. “I thought it could have been a Hawaiian hate crime.
However, Dunatov said, “within 24 hours of (starting) the investigation, I changed my mind.”
In addition to the authorities here and in Arizona, Dunatov consulted with friends and family back in his native country of Croatia in Eastern Europe. He lived there until he was 16 years old, later moving to Kaua‘i in 1966.
After consulting with family members, Dunatov concluded that the threat was not a hate crime from someone in Hawai‘i but instead “an Italian-style Mafioso vendetta attack.”
According to Dunatov, those types of attacks occurred in his native country when he was younger, usually in revenge.
With that conclusion in mind, Dunatov became alarmed, believing that his family and closest friends were in serious danger.
“Both of our offices became dysfunctional,” he said. “We were scared for our lives. We lived in terror for a week. This situation affected between 50 and 60 of our family members.”
Attempting to seek the source of the problem, and to ward off danger, Dunatov enlisted the services of KPD officer Daniel Finney and FBI agent Jeff Rutherford who both began an investigation.
According to Dunatov, Finney told him the incident was “extremely serious.”
The investigation focused on the Federal Express Kaua‘i office.
On Oct. 21, Dunatov had sent an associate of his company to the office to ship two boxes, one to his daughter and one to an architect in Scottsdale. The boxes held nothing but paper, business documents as well as architectural drawings and plans.
The Scottsdale architect received his FedEx box. Doris received hers, too, plus the mysterious parcel.
Finney, Rutherford and Dunatov paid five visits to the Kaua‘i FedEx office, and went away each time without resolving the origin of the mysterious box.
Dunatov said he and his family spent the day in fear and began considering hiring personnel guards.
Their fear turned into astonishment when a representative from FedEx called with a definitive answer to the family’s dilemma.
According to FedEx Corporate Spokesman Sally Davenport, a FedEx employee accidentally scanned one of the business package labels twice. The individual then put the additional label on the shipment, the box holding the bloody ram heads, which was sent to the Scottsdale address.
“It was an honest mistake,” Davenport said. “Our employees are human. We certainly understand the chagrin that that individual felt after receiving the package. For that we are sorry.”
The bloody heads, it turns out, were on the way to Craig Pearson, a taxidermist with a shop three blocks away from the Dunatov’s office in Scottsdale.
The shipment was from Ni‘ihau Safari, the company that stages hunts on Ni‘ihau, according to Leiana Robinson, a partner in the company.
“I was relieved,” said Dunatov. “We were all relieved.”
Despite the apparently innocent mix up, Dunatov consulted with his attorney, Harrison Kawate, about a legal suit against FedEx.
“There are still questions that need to be answered,” Dunatov said. “We are going to live in doubt about the nature of the package and how it was delivered. This kind of thing should not ever happen to anyone else.”
As for the four bloody ram heads, two sheep skins and a bag of sheep innards from Ni‘ihau, Dunatov said they’re being held by his family pending further investigation.
Business Editor Barry Graham can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) and mailto:bgraham@pulitzer.net
