The suspect moved from McCully to Kapolei on March 5, leaving one woman dead and another hospitalized, police say.

HONOLULU, Hawaii — Honolulu police say a 55-year-old man on a work furlough pass fatally stabbed his girlfriend in McCully, then drove to Kapolei and stabbed his estranged wife later the same day before officers subdued and arrested him outside her home.

The case now spans a homicide, an attempted killing, an alleged escape from a corrections program and new questions about how a man already serving prison time was able to travel between two Oʻahu neighborhoods before police tied the attacks together. John Nihipali Sr. was charged the next day and remained jailed without bail as detectives continued to review surveillance footage, track his movements and sort out what happened during the hours between the two scenes.

Police laid out a timeline that began late Thursday morning in McCully. Investigators said Nihipali entered a Fern Street apartment with his girlfriend a little after 10:30 a.m. Family members later told police he was seen leaving alone shortly after 2:45 p.m. By then, detectives believe, the 53-year-old woman had been stabbed multiple times. Officers were not sent there first. Instead, the first emergency call that drew police to Nihipali came at about 4:15 p.m. from Kealiʻiahonui Street in Kapolei, where his estranged wife lived. There, police said, he had entered the residence and stabbed the 53-year-old woman in the neck area. Lt. Deena Thoemmes of the Honolulu Police Department said officers found the suspect outside, still armed, and ordered him more than once to drop the knife before using a conducted electrical weapon to stop him.

That Kapolei attack was interrupted by a 30-year-old man inside the home, police said. Local reporting identified him as the victim’s adult son, and police said his intervention gave the wounded woman enough time to run to a neighbor’s home and ask for a 911 call. She was taken to The Queen’s Medical Center at Punchbowl and, by Friday, Thoemmes said she was “doing better.” Just over an hour after the Kapolei call, at about 5:30 p.m., officers answering a medical request on Fern Street found the second woman unresponsive in the apartment she shared with her 15-year-old son. Detectives later reclassified that case from an unattended death to murder after finding multiple stab wounds, including defensive injuries to her hands. Police said the dead woman’s vehicle was later found at the Kapolei scene, a key detail that helped connect the cases.

Investigators then used video and witness statements to fill in the middle of the day. Police said surveillance cameras showed Nihipali entering the McCully apartment with the woman and leaving alone hours later. Detectives said he then took her vehicle and drove west across Oʻahu, arriving in Kapolei just before 4 p.m. That movement mattered because Nihipali was not simply out in the community on his own. Police and corrections officials said he was enrolled in a work furlough program, was wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor and had been out on what the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation described as a resocialization furlough pass. He was supposed to return to the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center by 6 p.m. Thursday. By then, according to police, one woman was dead, another was fighting to recover and officers had already arrested him.

The suspect’s background added another layer to the case. Law enforcement officials said Nihipali was serving a five-year sentence for second-degree assault after completing an earlier 20-year term tied to an attempted manslaughter conviction. Local reporting on court records said the earlier case involved the slashing of his wife’s throat in 2004, and the second sentence was ordered to run after the first. Another older conviction on Hawaiʻi Island involved third-degree sexual assault. Those details did not answer why Thursday’s attacks happened, and police have not publicly described a motive. They have said only that the two women were linked to the same man: one was his estranged wife and the other was his girlfriend. The names of both women had not been released in the public statements available Friday and Saturday.

By Saturday, prosecutors had moved beyond the initial arrest count. Police announced that Nihipali had been charged with attempted murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, burglary in the first degree and escape in the second degree. He was being held without bail. The first-degree attempted murder count suggests prosecutors are alleging more than a spontaneous attack in Kapolei, though charging documents available in public summaries did not spell out all of the evidence behind that theory. Detectives said they were still conducting interviews and reviewing surveillance footage. Police also had not publicly released a next court date in the material available at the time, leaving the immediate next milestone as his initial court processing and any later hearing tied to bail status, arraignment or preliminary proceedings.

The scenes themselves showed how abruptly the day turned. In Kapolei, officers moved from a straightforward stabbing call to an armed confrontation in front of the home. In McCully, what first looked like a medical emergency became a homicide investigation inside an apartment where a teenager lived with the victim. Thoemmes’ public briefing was measured, but the facts she described were stark: a woman badly wounded in one part of the island, another found dead in another, and a suspect whose route could be traced through family accounts, cameras and a stolen vehicle. The estranged wife’s escape to a neighbor’s home gave police a live suspect and a living witness. The later discovery in McCully widened the case into a two-scene investigation with consequences that reached well beyond one household.

As of the latest public update, Nihipali remained jailed without bail, the surviving victim was reported to be improving, and detectives were still gathering evidence. The next major public milestone is expected to come with a court appearance and any fuller release of charging records.

Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.