In a written statement given to Hawai'i child welfare authorities in January — and in her own words yesterday — Peter Boy Kema's younger sister said that he appeared unconscious the last time she saw him and that his mother was trying to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"Mom was pounding on Peter Boy's chest trying to make him breathe," Devalynn Acol told The Advertiser yesterday in a telephone interview. "Mom looked scared. She was crying."

Devalynn's written statement, which was posted on the Department of Human Services' Web site yesterday along with statements from her siblings, was the latest attempt to determine what happened to the missing boy. He has not been seen since sometime in April or May 1997.

All references to the identity of each surviving sibling are blacked out in the statements, but The Advertiser was able to contact them independently. All three are living in Kona.

Human Services Director Lillian Koller said she solicited the statements because the case has gone unsolved for too many years.

"I wanted to determine what the current recollection was of these witnesses," Koller said. "I wanted to see, today, not 10 years ago, what do they still remember or can recall. I thought that would be pertinent to how reliable any testimony they may provide would be."

Devalynn is now 14 and Koller called her credibility "undeniable."

Devalynn wrote that after watching her mother rush into the home with Peter Boy in her arms, through a half-shut door she saw her mother put her lips to the boy's. She was shooed away by her parents when she asked what was wrong with him, she wrote.

"She did witness something," Koller said. "She was young, tender years, but saw what she saw and now, more mature, can recount it with great specificity and in her own hand."

ACCOUNT NOT NEW

Devalynn's account of what happened was not entirely new to authorities, including Koller.

Some of it was included in a public release of state documents in 2005 and her statements triggered a debate over their legal worth. Devalynn was 5 years old when she gave her first account to a psychologist — an age that Big Island prosecutors have said would make a murder conviction nearly impossible to obtain.

Devalynn's story has always ended the same way: Peter Boy is naked and motionless in a box.

Peter Boy disappeared sometime in the spring or early summer of 1997 amid suspicious circumstances. He would have turned 6 that May. His father, Peter Sr., claimed to have given him away to an old family friend whose existence has never been confirmed. It was not until January 1998, however, that his mother, Jaylin Kema, filed a missing-person's report with Big Island police.

NO ARRESTS, CHARGES

No one has ever been arrested or charges filed in connection with the case.

Big Island detectives in Hilo would not discuss the case yesterday, and the county prosecutor did not return calls seeking comment. Similarly, Peter Kema's attorney, Steven Strauss, did not return calls, and Jaylin Kema's attorney, Harry Eliason, declined to address the letter because he had not seen it.

"The investigation has ended, as far as we know, a long time ago," Eliason said. "I think we are re-mining the same old mine. I think this information presumably is old information."

Steven J. Choy, the psychologist who interviewed the children and their parents in 1998, yesterday said Devalynn's statements are as credible today as they were when he first heard them and relayed the details to authorities.

"It doesn't sound like embellishment at all," Choy said of the girl's recent statements. "It doesn't sound like fantasy at all. And the box is still a memory."

Choy, a clinical psychologist with the Kapiolani Child Protection Center, said that memories will haunt Peter Boy's siblings until there is some resolution.

"Memories stay with people for years and years," he said. "It keeps these memories haunting these kids for a lifetime. Closure is important."

Peter Boy's siblings, especially the older two, feel that need. Both said they felt guilty at not doing more to learn what happened on the day the boy vanished.

"The one time we should have been nosy we weren't," said Chauntelle Acol, now 18. "That kills me. We could have seen something or provided more information. Once we heard that shout from my mom, screaming 'Babe,' that should have been our first clue to do something."

In their letters to the Human Services officials, Chauntelle and her brother, Allan, described shocking treatment that has become a familiar staple of the Peter Boy saga. His father allegedly beat him bloody with a spoon, shot at him with a BB gun and left the boy locked in the trunk of the car when the family went to the beach.

Neither of the older siblings witnessed what Devalynn saw, Chauntelle said. But she said a few hours later, Peter Sr. came outside alone.

"His eyes were bloodshot," she said. "He looked really distraught. Kind of in a daze."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.