Shortly after their son, Aidan Dungan, first went missing on Maui in 2019, Kaua‘i couple Laurie and Sam Dungan got a call from a woman offering to help with whatever they needed.
“She called to introduce herself and said 'I’m here if you need me,'” recalled Aidan’s mother Laurie, a teacher at Kaua‘i High School.
The Dungans quickly realized that it was more than just kind words; the woman really meant it.
“And then she just started doing everything in her power to find out what happened,” Laurie said. “She’s an angel.”
The woman on the other end of the line was Kimberlyn Scott, the mother of Carly Scott — better known by her nickname, Charli, a Maui woman who disappeared in 2014 when she was five months pregnant and whose ex-boyfriend was later convicted of her murder.
In the 12 years since her daughter’s death, Kimberlyn has become a tireless force dedicated to helping victims and their families through legislative advocacy, raising awareness about missing persons cases, and assisting families of the missing in on-the-ground searches on Maui — all as a volunteer.
Kimberlyn told Aloha State Daily that she never intentionally set out to do this work. Instead, she sees it as a natural progression of what she’s been through.
“It’s not like I woke up one morning and said I’m going to start doing all of this. … All of these things just organically meant to have me doing what I was doing,” she said. “There was kind of no way around it.”
Simpler times
In the years before Charli’s murder, Kimberlyn said that hers was a normal family — blended and large, but normal.
Kimberlyn initially moved to Hawai‘i as a kid with her parents from California and was raised between Hawai‘i Island and O‘ahu. They eventually returned to the Mainland, but she said she “never got Hawai‘i out of my system” and she later settled on Maui as an adult with her daughters, including Charli, who was a teenager when they made the move. When she married her husband, Johnny, together they had eight girls.
Kimberlyn was a self-described “neighborhood mom” devoted to taking care of her bustling household.
By early 2014, her two youngest girls were teenagers, while the rest were grown and out of the house. Charli was 27, holding down three jobs — at a salon, an arts center, and at a flower shop where she worked with Kimberlyn — as she prepared to become a first-time mom.
Kimberlyn said Charli was excited for the arrival of her baby boy, Joshua.
“She was thrilled, absolutely thrilled — she always wanted to be a mama,” Kimberlyn said.
One of the middle children in the large family, Charli, by her mother’s account, was warm, caring, and responsible — so responsible, in fact, that Kimberlyn often told Charli to look after her sister growing up, even though her sister was the older one.
“Charli was so stable and so reliable and just down to earth,” Kimberlyn said.
Things weren’t always easy — the family had its ups and downs, and relationships could be strained at times — but looking back, Kimberlyn said, life was simple in a way she didn’t realize at the time.
That simplicity was shattered on a Sunday evening, Feb. 9, 2014, after Charli left a family birthday celebration for one of her sisters.
When no one could get in touch with Charli the next day, Kimberlyn reported her missing.
A few days into the search, Charli’s burned vehicle was found near a remote surf spot, according to court records and reporting at the time, followed by clothing and other items belonging to Charli, and, finally, bone fragments. With that evidence, Maui police reclassified her disappearance from a missing persons case to a homicide investigation, and in July 2014, Charli’s ex-boyfriend, Steven Capobianco — the father of her unborn child and the last known person to see her — was indicted on a second-degree murder charge for her death.
Capobianco pleaded not guilty — he admitted he saw Charli on the night she disappeared, but claimed he called her for a ride to get his truck after it broke down near the Ke‘anae area and that he last saw her driving behind him on the Hāna Highway.
In 2016, after a trial that stretched on for several months, a jury found Capobianco guilty of Charli’s murder, as well as an arson charge for burning her vehicle in an attempt to cover up the crime. He was sentenced to life in prison.
‘I was meant to be there’
The first time Kimberlyn got involved in another missing persons case was just a year after Charli’s death, in 2015, when a local man left his home one night and never returned. Volunteer organization Maui Search and Rescue coordinated a search, and Kimberlyn joined in on the effort. She was tasked with bringing food and water to the volunteers, and when she showed up with the supplies, organizers asked her to try to gather more information from the man’s family.
“They told me the family seemed really reluctant to answer [the questionnaire], maybe you can try,” Kimberlyn recalled. “And I was like sure, I’ll go try.”
The family recognized Kimberlyn — they knew she was Charli’s mother, and that opened up the conversation. She also had a sense of how to talk to them and what questions to ask.
The man was never found, but the experience made Kimberlyn realize her unique value in this type of scenario.
“People trusted me because I was Charli's mama. So they would tell me things they wouldn't tell other people,” she said. “It just felt like such a natural fit, like I was meant to be there.”
Kimberlyn, of course, knows the precise kind of pain that comes with having a missing loved one.
Immediately after Charli went missing, Kimberlyn and her family knew something was wrong — it was extremely out of the ordinary for Charli not to be in contact with her mother or sisters — but they clung to the hope that maybe she had just gotten in an accident and was out there somewhere. In those early days, Kimberlyn drove back and forth on the Hāna Highway, pulling over every 50 feet to call Charli’s name and peer into ravines for signs that her car may have gone off the road. Via social media, the family organized volunteer search parties that scoured the area.
Though Charli’s full remains have never been found, clothing with her blood on it, her skirt with nearly 20 puncture marks, and parts of her body — including her jawbone, hair, and fingertips — were uncovered within days of her disappearance, enough evidence to indicate that Charli was dead.
It wasn’t the answer anyone wanted, but at least it was an answer, Kimberlyn believes today.
“Because we found those things, we knew Charli was deceased. When I compare that to the situation that families who don’t know are in, it’s a pretty bizarre statement to say, but I feel lucky to know that my daughter is dead,” she said. “When I’m working with other families … I’ve felt like I am the sole survivor of a plane crash, it’s that kind of guilt, because I have answers and they don’t.”
Kimberlyn said she also is grateful for the community — hundreds showed up to help search for Charli, and the case garnered ample media attention locally and even nationally.
“We got so much help from the community and from the press,” Kimberlyn said. “There were so many people helping us. … And that doesn’t happen in every case.”
‘She was there for just anything we needed’
Over the years, Kimberlyn has helped bring attention to other missing persons cases by hanging flyers and using the original Find Charli Scott Facebook page — which has more than 8,300 followers — to raise awareness.
She’s also worked directly with dozens of families of the missing, assisting in everything from helping them navigate communication with police, to coordinating travel logistics for families coming to Maui to look for loved ones, to participating in on-the-ground search efforts. She also talks to family members to see if she can uncover any new information or identify gaps in the case.
“I let them know what information they need to have. I make sure that the families know to tell [the police] about specific things, like mental health issues,” she said. “I get them set up so that it’s easier for the police, too.”
In 2022, Dave Wyatt got a call that his 37-year-old son, Joey Wyatt, never returned home after a camping trip. Dave and his daughter immediately flew to Maui from their home on the East Coast to help with the search.
It was overwhelming — not only emotionally, but they were unfamiliar with the Islands and had no local contacts. Kimberlyn was a “godsend” through the ordeal, Dave said.
They were introduced to her through a friend of a friend, and by the time they arrived on Maui, she had already secured them a rental car, a hotel, and discounts at restaurants, and coordinated interviews with local media.
“We knew nobody. We knew nothing. We had no idea how to even start the process,” Dave said. “She was very instrumental in getting all the resources pulled together. … It was all organized and basically sitting on a platter waiting for us when we got there.
“We met with her and she gave us some insight on what the next steps were going to be, what we needed to do. She was there for just anything we needed. If we needed to talk, she’d make herself available.”
Joey was never found — his car was discovered near Nakalele Point, and Dave said it’s presumed he fell into the water and was swept away — but Dave said the search was so thorough that at least he feels he has a definitive answer in his son’s disappearance.
Kimberlyn said she has helped with many searches that do have happy endings — in one case, for instance, she tracked down a missing man and stayed with him until his family was able to fly over from O‘ahu to get him — though these days she said she is focused on helping families whose cases have gone cold, like the Dungans.
It’s been seven years since Aidan, then 23, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, vanished from a sober living facility in Wailuku, and the Dungans are still looking for answers.
Laurie said that shortly after they first talked to her on the phone, Kimberlyn became their “point person on the ground.”
“She knows a lot of people in the community, so through her contacts she’d go to places to talk to people, asking if they have seen Aidan — things that we were not able to do from Kauai.”
Laurie said that having Kimberlyn involved in the search for her son has “meant everything” to her.
“She knows what it’s like,” Laurie said. “She’s faced the roadblocks, and she knows the pain—nobody knows what it’s like until you’ve experienced it. … You’re so lost at a time like that, so bewildered through that chaos. With grief like that, it’s hard to focus, so Kim was our focus.”
To this day, Laurie said Kimberlyn is the first person she calls when she wants to talk about Aidan.
“I’m so, so thankful for her and everything she does,” Laurie said. “I think if anybody is ever going to find out what happened to Aidan, it’s probably going to be Kim.”
Kimberlyn said she is in the process of creating case packages for families of missing persons designed to equip them with information about their case and their legal rights. Each will include case timelines and analyses, search maps, and information on any investigative technology relevant to the case, as well as a guide on how to access public records.
Kimberlyn said the goal is to give families tools to help move their cases forward.
“They become their own best advocates, and I want to make sure they know how,” she said.
Navigating the justice system
As legal proceedings got underway for Charli’s case in 2014, Kimberlyn said she came into the situation “as a lot of families and victims of crimes do — I didn’t know anything.”
So she dove into educating herself on the justice system, and as she learned more, she started advocating for legislation to address gaps she saw. She’s since advocated for and co-authored proposed legislation addressing issues that include child safety and constitutional protections for crime victims within the system.
Currently, Kimberlyn is drafting language for what she hopes will be two new bills, and she said she’s reaching out to state lawmakers in hopes to find sponsors for the proposals.
The first is one she’s developing with the Dungan family that they’re calling Aidan’s law, designed to strengthen protections for missing persons with mental health and addiction issues, or who are experiencing homelessness, by establishing mandatory reporting timelines to national databases for such individuals, among other requirements.
Kimberlyn said the issue is important to her because many of the missing persons cases she has seen involve individuals with substance abuse issues and/or mental health illnesses.
“Some of the most vulnerable people who go missing in Hawaii are the least likely to have their cases handled with the urgency and visibility that could bring them home — and by the time a family realizes what happened, critical early days have already been lost,” she said.
The other is a no body, no parole law — similar to laws that exist in the United Kingdom and Australia — that would mandate convicted murderers cooperate with authorities to reveal the location of a victim’s remains in order to be eligible for parole.
This one is personal for Kimberlyn. Capobianco’s sentencing includes the possibility of parole, but he has never confessed to Charli’s murder — he continues to maintain his innocence — and her full remains have never been found.
“I don’t want to die with this undone,” she said. “I don’t want to leave it for my daughters to do. I want to do everything within my legal power to make sure that Steven spends every minute of the time he got.”
More work to do
There are 298 missing persons in Hawai‘i as of this writing, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a database for missing persons cases throughout the country.
As Kimberlyn sees it, this means she has more work to do.
Under an umbrella she’s calling UnSolved Maui, Kimberlyn has a few new projects in the pipeline aimed at raising awareness about missing persons cases and providing resources for victims. UnSolved Maui will feature a podcast and YouTube series about missing people in the Islands that she said “is designed to represent each family’s loved one with dignity while making the full scale of what is unresolved in this state visible to the public.”
She’s also aiming to launch a nonprofit arm dedicated to serving families of missing persons and survivors of crimes through advocacy, investigative support, public outreach and other resources.
Keeping Charli’s memory alive
Kimberlyn is still based on Maui, but today also splits her time between Washington and California to spend time with her daughters and seven grandchildren.
Despite everything they have been through, Kimberlyn said she has raised “very strong, tough, amazing, smart women who are doing just fine.”
Still, there’s the sense that their family will never be truly complete.
“We call it the Charli-shaped hole in our lives,” she said. “It’s just a big hole, you know?”
Kimberlyn’s intense, continued fervor for her work can sometimes be hard for her family to understand. Once, several years ago, her daughters called to make plans to celebrate Mother’s Day. She said they were upset when she told them she wasn’t available because she was going to be spending the day as part of a search party for a missing hiker.
Kimberlyn admits it is draining work. She herself has sometimes questioned how is it that she keeps doing this year after year.
But when asked what keeps her going, she immediately answers: “She does.”
“Charli does. She always will. She is the foundation everything I do is predicated on. This is my way of keeping her alive for everyone,” Kimberlyn said. “I hear this from multiple families with deceased children that one of our worst fears is that our children get forgotten.”
Kimberlyn, of course, can’t forget. She feels the pain of loss constantly.
“There are little things — a song will come on. There are so many triggers, so many painful lumps and bumps when you navigate the world and you have a murdered or missing loved one,” Kimberlyn said.
Those feelings never go away.
It’s not that her work for other victims alleviates her pain; it’s more that it doesn’t have to.
Doing this work, Kimberlyn said, “means that Charli can be right there with me and I don’t have to put her away.”
“If I had gone back to my flower job, I would have had to sit there and smile at people [and say] ‘aloha, here's your flowers.’ … I'm grateful when I look at it from that perspective — that I was able to put myself into something like this where it’s not in conflict with what I'm feeling.”
If Charli were still alive today, she would be 39 years old. Joshua would be 12.
A few years ago, Kimberlyn shared a letter she wrote in tribute to Charli on what would have been her 32nd birthday,posted to the Find Charli Scott Facebook page.
In the letter, Kimberlyn imagined what Charli’s life would have been like at that moment in time. Charli would have graduated college and started her own hair salon that served both people and dogs — something she had dreamt of. She would have found love with a kind man. Joshua would have been four years old, and would have loved playing with his cousins.
But, as Kimberlyn notes in the letter, the cozy picture she paints of their life is of course just a dream.
She concludes the letter with this:
My heart beats to the question-
Where are you Baby Girl?
While yours beats not at all.
I can't let go of the shape of your hand in my mind...
I am searching for You and Joshua.
Won't stop till I draw my last breath, and maybe not even then if there be a way after.
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Christina O'Conner can be reached at christinawongoconnor@gmail.com.
