18-year-old victim identified

LIHU‘E — Kaua‘i Police Department detectives said yesterday that they have found “persons of interest” in their ongoing investigation into the death of an 18-year-old girl found Wednesday near a coastal area commonly known as Glass Beach in Port Allen.

But police said yesterday no arrests have been made in the apparent stabbing death Wednesday night of Weslyn Jerves, a former resident of Hanama‘ulu and the mother of a little girl, Ceriann, who is not yet 20 months old.

Many in Hanama‘ulu knew the victim, and had stopped by Jerves’ grandparents house in Hanama‘ulu to express their support, said Wesly Jerves, Weslyn’s father.

“They stay all right. We’re lucky we get a big family,” Jerves said. “When you see (a picture) and remember, you cry. People (have been coming), telling me she was one respectable girl.

“The father and daughter relationship is special. I could kill,” Jerves said. But “I (will) try not to get involved, let the cops do their work.”

Police said yesterday that they were working on piecing together Weslyn Jerves’ last moments Wednesday night.

“We’re still in the process of identifying all she was in contact with” Wednesday night, KPD Lt. Roy Asher said yesterday. “We have tracked some of her movements through the evening.”

Asher added that police have “a few persons of interest, and are in the process of identifying some and locating others.”

Detectives were again asking that anyone who may have had contact with Jerves on Wednesday to contact Asher, Detective Sam Sheldon or Detective Marvin Rivera through police dispatch at 241-1711. Callers who wish to remain anonymous may call Crime Stoppers at 241-1887.

Meanwhile, word about the crime spread quickly through the “Coconut Wireless” on the Westside, and some parents thought to keep their children inside this weekend, out of fear that the serial killer who attacked three women and killed two of them in 2000 was on the loose.

“The rumor mill is going wild,” said a concerned parent from Kekaha who wished not to use his name. “Very few people seemed to have the proper information, and the newspaper was all sold out.”

The father of a teenage daughter was worried about letting her daughter out of the house at all during the long Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend, he said.

But Asher, supervisor of KPD adult-crime detectives, said there is no reason to conduct anything other than “normal safety procedures.

“At this time, we have no reason to believe or suspect that this homicide investigation may be linked to any previous homicides,” Asher added.

With the victims a different race and age, it appears the details of the crime are different. He refused to divulge any further information about possible causes of death, circumstances of the crime scene, or what she might have been doing in Port Allen.

Asher also wouldn’t release details from the autopsy, performed yesterday at Wilcox Memorial Hospital by Dr. Anthony Manoukian, a pathologist at Maui Memorial Medical Center, including whether or not Jerves was sexually assaulted.

Non-police sources said that Jerves was stabbed.

It appears Jerves did not get to the area by herself, as Asher said no vehicle which could be linked to Jerves was found in the area.

Jerves was found in a dirt area in close proximity to Glass Beach, off the paved road and behind the Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative power plant, after an anonymous person called police dispatch reporting the body at around 7 a.m. Thursday.

Jerves apparently had been staying often at Hanama‘ulu Beach Park, and may have been involved with crystal methamphetamine, said friends and relatives of the family.

Jerves’ father, Wesly, has been raising Ceriann. “She’s my closest love.”

His family now has to decide whether or not to show Ceriann her mother in her casket.

“The circle of life is the young bury the old, not the old bury the young,” the father said. “Now it’s all different.”

Tom Finnegan, staff writer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mailto:tfinnegan@pulitzer.net.