Sandra Galas

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Helloha, everyone, Welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Rascha Pecerreiro and I'mivet Genteel. In this week, we're talking about the murder of Sandra Gaullis. This murder took place back in two thousand and six, and it happened in Hawaii, our home state. And I know many people think of the beautiful islands of Hawaii as a tropical paradise, which it absolutely is. But it's a place you don't think that

And the thing about this case is that it seemed like it was an open and shut case, but this took so long for justice to actually come to this case. And it's really because of the parents, the family, the Ohanna, the village that fought for justice.

Yes, and we are so grateful today to have part of that village with us to join us in a conversation about Sandy. We have two members of her Ohana with us here today, but first our producer Trevor is going to walk us through today's case.

In January of two thousand and six, twenty seven year old Sandra Galis was found strangled in her car parked in the garage of her Ala La home.

Police launched the murder investigation, but never arrested a suspect and the case went cold until now, Koa You police have arrested a man for the murder of Sandra Gallis. He was her ex husband.

Cal what you police say this has been a collaborative effort and they say they were able to track down the suspected killer because of improved DNA technologies and a new cold case unit.

Sandra Gallis was a twenty seven year old woman who was killed in Hawaii in two thousand and six. On the morning of January twenty fifth, Sandra was found dead in her car parked in her garage at her home in Kawaii. The causes of death were strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head. Seven years earlier, she had married Darren Gallis. Together they had two sons. In April of two thousand and five, Sandra and Darren separated after she discovered that he was cheating on her. They decided

Today we are so grateful to have Lawrence Mendanza Senior and Lawrence Mendanza Junior. They are the father and the brother of Sandy Gaullis. We are so honored to have you both on the show today, and especially Larry, thank you so much for being here on your birthday. You just turned eighty two. To be here with us to talk about your beautiful daughter, it's it just means so much, So thank you both for being here.

Thank you for having us.

So Holi lahanaw Larry, Happy birthday, Arry, So dad, We're gonna call you Larry, and then Laurence Junior. Of course, Laurence, so our listeners know, but thank you so much for being here. And we know that we are all from the same beautiful state, raised in Julvity and I feel like it's going to be one of the many things that we share. I would love to know what was it like growing up for you, Lawrence in Kawai.

It was awesome.

I mean, as you all know, I mean, the state of Provii is just incredible, right, It's not just the beauty of the of the aina, but also just the beauty of the people. And it's a privilege to have grown up there and experienced life on the island.

Absolutely, it's you know, Hawaii is really a special place. Can you start to tell us about your sister, Like, what was it like, you know, growing up with your sister? What did you guys do together? What was your life together?

Like, well, you know, the first part of growing up on Kai we lived on a ranch and on a whole office, so you know, it was one hundred and forty two acres, had our own waterfall in front of the house, and the beach front access. So you know, we used to go out. I used to take my pelict gun and she used to get a little fanny pack and we would God, we had two fruit orchards on the property, so we would go and we'd be

And those are other things. You know.

If I shot something, I had to eat it.

So I always shot, yeah, right, I had to.

Clean it and eat it, bring it home. Mom would cook it, you know. But then we would go to the beach and just hang out on the beach and play. And it's time to come home. We knew, you know, started get dark, all right, we got to go back to the house. Mom was making dinner.

So it was you know, it was awesome.

What was the age difference between the two of you.

Two years or year nine months?

A little a little shorter of a distance. Evet and I are eleven years apart. But I would just follow her around everywhere. But we were city girls. We never got to kill anything and eat it. Peys maybe, but that's about it.

Larry.

I would love to know your your backstory and you and your wife. Obviously you made the conscious decision to raise Sandy and Lawrence on Kowai. What what made you decide to do that, especially having lived all over the world and in Japan.

If I'm not mistaken, I was born on Kawai.

Oh you are a Kawai boy. Okay, oh wow.

I'm a local boy all the way through.

I love it and.

I got ready to retire from the military. Lawrence was three years old, Sandy was two years old. Mmmmm.

Sandraw was actually born in Japan, the country of her her mother. And the reason I came back to Hawaii was I have I had three brothers, two older, one younger.

We're all military brats.

If you will, muhullo for your service, thank you.

I was the only one that came back to Kawai.

The other three actually ended up living in Texas and or Oklahoma. I think that basically to take care mom and dad. There was nobody here to take care mom and dad. And I think it was a great decision. I don't regret it, and other than the fact of losing Sandy, but of course that was her decision.

So Lawrence, growing up with your sister, you know, as you guys started to get older, you know, in your teen years, like what was you know some of your sister's dreams, like what did she want to be?

Or do you know she always wanted to have a family. You know, she loved being with her friends, she loved dancing, hula was she she was? She was she performed a lot in fact that can verify this. What was she in the coal plantation day Prix?

When she was younger, she joined Leilani Bond pull Lull. She participated in kikiula competition. M Well, she was in high school. She actually worked part time on why l e Li riverboat trips.

Up to the Fern Grotto and Little River. That's where she made her spending money.

I love it.

She was a local girl through and through.

She was never satisfied with everything. She was always in a hurry to get get what she was doing. She actually convinced us to let her join the gymnastics for school when she was five years old. Shortly thereafter and she decided she wanted to learn hula. So she was doing gymnastics and dancing and learning to dance sula. I love it and that was the start of her life.

She wanted more. She called us, I can take more, I can take no. We put a stop on that.

She she wanted to do everything but she never really thought about it as to managing her time. So we'd sit her down and say, Okay, where are you going to get the time?

I'll make time. I'll make time. That was sy That was that was her life.

Sounds like Sandy really had a lust for life. And especially when you dance hula, you have to, you know, appreciate the eye of the land that you come from, and she just it's like a beautiful soul. I'd love to ask you, Lawrence. So we're here to tell Sandy's story, to get her voice out there and to know more about what to look for, because we're always looking for the light in the darkness. And so if you feel comfortable,

Looking back on it, yeah, Hind's like twenty twenty, right, can you look back on things and you're like, oh, I would have paid more attention, or we had paid more attention, maybe something could have been done. So, I mean, I distinctly remember one instance, and I was I had come home for it was the summer or what. But I happened to be home on Kawai and she came

And I was like, and I.

Jokingly and looking back pretty inappropriately, but.

What happened there?

He beat daring, beating you or what?

And she just kind of played off.

She said, no, I ran into the table or whatever.

You know, typical response.

Yeah, yeah, looking back, you know it probably was the result of of something of that sort. And you know, it's it's one of the things that kind of wears on me.

You can't let that get to Lawrence.

Yeah, yeah, it's for the most part of me. She she knew if she ever told me or Dad or any of the family or any very really close friends what was really going on, she knew what would happen. And you know, she was very much the type that would take care of things on her own, whether it didn't matter.

What it was.

You know, she was a gutter yea.

Yeah, so looking back, yeah, there's probably signs that that weren't as obvious. And me being away from home so much, I mean, I have seen it a whole lot. If I was home more, maybe I would have been able to see more of it and just kind of get a grasp on it and kind of reel it in. And there were definitely signs there.

One of the reasons that I was so attached to this case and it so emotionally struck me is just the circumstances and you know, the way that things happened and how he didn't get convicted until twelve years later. But you the family, you're Ohana like you fought and fought and fought for justice to come. You know, how did you do that?

Is my question?

How did you you all stay so strong, you know, just to keep persevering forward.

Dad was a spearhead.

I mean, he made it his life's mission to get justice from my sister, and he did not let anything get in the way of that. You know. He was meeting with the police chief, you know, every month and had developed a very close relationship with the police chief.

Was that Chief Perry right?

Mm hm, Yes, yes, Dad was definitely the spearhead for that, and you know it wouldn't let her name die and we sat down and thought about things. I remember thinking about things to keep her name out there, like fundraisers and charity events, and because of friends the family, we were able to get in touch with the y w c A and help them put together golf course or a golf tournament and keep my sister's name alive and keep the public aware of what's going on and you know,

For sure, they.

Will not let anyone forget Sandy. No.

Well. Started at her graves.

I promised her that I would go until we got close here, and I always lived by that model. When I make a promise, I intend to keep it whatever the cost.

Whatever the cost.

Yeah, any things with Sandy that you know why she was growing up during the awkward ages, we never got along. She thought it was a cruelest and Mena's father.

In the world.

She had made it after Reft she was married and you know, wanted our help and all this. She said, Well, I thought you were Mena's dead in the world, but no, I can't live without you.

We made up.

We were we were bonding and getting quite pleasuredly together with each other over the last two or three years of her life.

I can definitely say that they but it heads a lot because they had identical personalities.

Personalities sounds like me and my daughter Leilani. Yeah, I can, I can relate. I can relate very very much so, and I'm sure it was different when Sandy became a parent herself. And is it appropriate and is it comfortable for you to talk about Sandy's children and how they are.

There were three and five when Sandy died, and they lived with their father, who was the perpetrator, so consequently he poisoned their minds. Children think Sandy was an evil woman, and Grandpa is unheard of. Grandpa is beyond that. They won't talk, They won't talk to us, they won't listen to us.

Nothing.

But I've had family friends, relatives that met with him, so they were cousins and all this.

They just shout him. That's the way the two children are.

I'm so sorry.

In fact, the oldest one, he will turn twenty three on the twenty fourth of this month, and when I send them cards and all that, in some cases they won't even gesh to check.

Other cases, they'll keep.

It till the bare minimum maximum time before they catch it.

No, thank you, no nothing. We don't hear from them at all.

I'm so sorry.

This was something I anticipated when I decided to pursue Sandy's case. It was a decision that we had to make because either we lay Sandy to rest the way she should have been and corporate the relations with our grandchildren.

That's a decision we made.

In order to have justice.

I guess I can ask both of you this question. You believed that he was the one who did it. It wasn't Ryan, her boyfriend. All of the evidence was pointing to Darren.

There were two different people. Ryan was cooperative. We were up in Texas visiting with Lawrence and my brother at the time when Sandy was killed, so we had to rush back and when we got back, we.

Met Ryan for the first time.

I never you know, he was He wasn't in our lives to be prior to Andy's death, but he was cooperative. He had some issues, but and still on occasion I communicate with him via emails. He's in he lives in Anola. Darren was just the opposite. Darren wouldn't have anything to do with us. He discouraged the two boys from even communicating with us. I uh when they got a food order for visitors, right and he signed it and agreed.

They were being badgered.

When I brought them back on Sunday evening, they were being verbally badgered.

Larry, can you tell us a little bit about the Sandy g Memorial golf tournament that they have every year in Kawhai.

After Sandy got killed, there was, you know, as part of keeping her name and the case alive, that the young lady that worked at the YWCA News Sandy and Lawrence. She was one of their teachers when they were in elementary school at Saint Katherine School. And this particular person was the principal of Saint Katrine School when Sandy graduated, so you know she knew Sandy quite well. Yeah, after

And they, you know, kept the thing going.

But in the process I got with Renee, who is who had moved from an employee at the at the YW to the executive director of.

The YW un koy okay Oh.

After we got organized about a year after Sandy's death. The year year and a half, we decided to start a golf tournament.

Wow, fantastic we did.

We do it every year.

Now it's it's like the seventeenth or eighteen anniversary coming up, and.

It's August of twenty twenty three. Yeah.

Yeah, first tournament only had like about thirteen or fourteen teams.

Still pretty good.

Yeah, side different scratch. There was really nothing.

We really didn't know what we were doing. But as we progress for the last two years, we've matched out. The maximum is thirty six teams that we can have in one one.

Shift, if you will. If we get anything bigger, then we'd have to have a second shift.

Wow.

They uses their earnings for domestic violence in YWCA activities, but averages out maybe about on an average about maybe twenty thousand.

That's fantastic, goes to the foundation, right for the YWCA.

Right, I'd beget questions over and over that want to emphasized it. As co sponsors of the thing, we did nothing.

Yeah, you're not making money, that's not what you're doing.

Yeah, we're not there to make money.

Well, we're there to keep Sandy's.

Name going on.

That being said, it costs me out of pocket on an average between five hundred and fifteen hundred dollars for every tournament, and Launch contributes some of it.

But we got to where.

We give out a sleeve a sleeve of three three golf balls in a box of a logo golf balls. We through relatives, family and et cetera, we came up with logo for Sandy g and I had it printed, I had it made out, and then we had it put on golf faults and back this year, I spent over one thousand dollars getting two years supply of golf logo golf bault, which is one of the things I donate to the tournament. Lawrence doronates the logo te's and ballmarkers.

That's absolutely beautiful.

We also get a lot of help from the community, a lot of donations from businesses and you know, family members and contributing and and even like people just reaching out. We have donations from all over all over the country, golfers coming in from all over the country a lot

Done our job.

Not only are we keeping my sister's name alive, but we're helping others not have to endure what my sister endured and what we endured as well.

Absolutely, so, Sandy has a monument at the White b C on Kola, and can you tell us a little bit about that, Lawrence, weren't you there for the opening of that?

I feel like I saw something with you for part of it.

They it was kind of a two part deal. They put a plaque there with my sister's picture and kind of her story. They had a true opening when they had the cranes put in, and I was not there for that. My parents were there, but they had a big celebration and almost a lot of my sister's friends showed up, and it was right there in downtown Lehuy.

To see it.

How Howard came about was when I when they agreed to start the golf tournament. So I kind of fell off, felt obligated to go in and help them. So I was going in just about every day, five days a week, doing handy dandy work on maintenance, so little minor maintenance, whatever they wanted to help.

One day I went in there.

And I was so check in with the executive director to see what she wanted, if she had anything for me to do, and she.

Said, well, have a seat, let's have a talk.

And okay, she said, well with the board has just met last night and they agreed to make a monument for Sandy. And they were interested to know whether I was, you know, I was agree to it or whatever. Of course keeping her name alive yet, yeah, that was all fort What they didn't tell me was we expect you to make the monument.

Oh okay, that's a big piece to leave out.

So there was one worker, a young fellow, he's in his forties that I was training. He worked there full time so and he wasn't very familiar with all the mating and stuff. So I was training him on where whatever I was doing. Bring him along and short so long story short, he and I ended up making the moss rock we true to why. We got a guy to volunteer to donate a look at a payloader bucket full of moss rock that we had to go down and pick up with a truck and aul it up

Seat.

Oh so someone can sit there.

What a lot of people most people don't know.

Is on the seat in it's marsh rock around and then a marble slab on top. But in the middle of that we ended up putting a crime capsule in, Oh.

You did what year was that that you did?

That?

So have good ten years ago and I had never done work with marsh rock before. Fortunately they help or had had some experience, so we between the two of us we got it done and ironically not the monument even the logo of Sandy. We put on Sandy's golf boat. I have a cousin living up right outside of Los Angeles, and he's about two months older than I am, and he's a very educated person who's got a PhD. And he's a part time artist and photographer.

So I got with him.

Told him what we wanted on the monument, and between he and I and over the phone, he drew up exactly what we wanted.

Well, I promise you we will visit her memorial when we go to Lihue Koway. Yeah, I would love to know. How do you imoa right? How do you move onward and upward?

Is?

What does your healing journey look like? I'd love to know from your perspective, first, Lawrence, if we could, as an uncle, as a brother, I want to know about you personally, how do you heal if that's even possible.

Keeping her alive? I have two children on my own, my oldest Sander. You know, when my wife was pregnant with my son, were we definitely wanted to keep my sister's memory alive. And you know, we tossed names back and forth, and we finally decided on Sander, spelt a little differently than the normal.

It's s A N.

D R. So we basically took Sandra, my sister's.

Ficial friends and flip floped the last two letters. So and both my children, my son Sander.

And my daughter Brelan, both absolutely know my sister although they never met her. Yeah, we celebrate her birthday. We have her pictures up in the house. Obviously, my son's named after her. It's amazing because there's times where we'll just be sitting around and talking and my daughter go, Daddy, I miss and Sandy, or my son will say the same thing, I miss as Sandy.

I wish I met her. So that's definitely you know, it's.

Keeping her memory alive, and you know, passing it on to my kids and making sure my kids understand. And and my son is is very inquisitive.

He's a very smart boy, and he's he's.

Always asking questions, well, why why did this happen?

Daddy?

And you know, why do people do that? And you know, it also gives me and my wife an opportunity to educate both our kids on situations like this and and to have them understand that this is not something we do. If you see it happen, you want to step up and put a stop to it. And then they both know about the golf tournament.

Like you said, looking for that ray of sunshine, you know, and looking for the light in the darkness and turning.

A good into a bad. And so we're.

Definitely having my children, you know, pass on the positive from it's it's it's something we definitely look to do.

You know, Larry, can you tell us what the light would be in your story? You know, as as Sandra's dad. What last words could you leave us?

I don't know if there is a light for me at the end of the tunnel. The light was getting Sandy's case solved and putting her to risk. Maybe that's what I came to this world for. I don't know, But I really have no desire, if you will, to have anything. I've done what I tended to do. Now there's just a matter of living life and trying to have our life, my wife and iyes as comfortable as possible.

In my humble opinion, Larry, you are the light. That is the light. Yeah, you are the light.

I know your your wife, and your son, Lawrence, and your grandbabies, and Sandy knows you're the light. I definitely want to say, from the absolute bottom of our hearts, Mahalo Nuiloa, thank you so much for sharing your light, Sandy's light with us. I know it's not easy to talk about, but I believe in moments that are supposed to happen for a reason, and today, in this moment, on Larry's eighty second.

Birthday, we were supposed to be here.

We were all supposed to be together and to share Sandy's story, and we promise you we will not let the world forget her.

Once Sandy's case was solved, I had agreed with the Dateline at the time that I would give them the full information I had, and they agreed not to publish here.

It built after the case was solved.

After the trial, beautiful, they held up to their agreement.

I held up to mine.

After that was done, I always bound and determined that's it. I got what I did, what I wanted to do, and I was not going to participate in any additional broadcast which Oxygen Lawrence took over. I didn't participate in that, so podcasts. I'm not familiar with it. Something told me to go ahead and participate in it. So consider yourselves lucky.

We are.

We have to thank you from the bottom of our hearts from being here. You got two new nieces and learned to got a new cousin so or new two cousins so well, we.

Welcome both the ENSA Ohanna.

I'd like to say any of you come to Kawaii, is what they said.

Today's message of hope and healing goes out to the memory of Santra Goddiss in this.

Story of absolute heartbreak.

We never want to lose sight of the person whose light was lost way too soon to such tragedy.

Sandra was a beautiful, strong local girl with a strong inner drive. Her father even said in grade school that she had perfect attendance and was described as being a teacher's pet. Also in high school, she ran track and she danced.

Tula Sandy's Ohanna. Her family shared with us that she was full of energy, she wanted to do everything all at once, and she was a absolute go getter. Sandra shined as a gymnast and she even had dreams of becoming a journalist.

One day after she separated from her husband, she became an assistant food and beverage manager at the Grand Hyatt on Kawhi, where her co workers said that she was a great manager and she would give her all to everyone.

Sandra would never become the journalist that she dreamt of being, but at the time of her death, she was truly coming into her own. She ended up getting married young, and she had two beautiful children, and she was a devoted mother. She was just finding out who she was meant to be. And so today we want to honor that bright light that was Sandy. Onward and upward, Emua Emua.

That's our show for today.

We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a case you'd like for us to.

Cover, find us on social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.

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Until next time. Aloha.

Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia Paccuerero in a Vetchintila, Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf of iHeartRadio with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald Albright in Pain Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmage.