On October 18, 2024, Wayne Richard Moriarty was found dead inside a residence on Tiki Lane in the Hawaii Ocean View Estates subdivision in Ocean View, Hawaii; he was a 56-year-old man, and police initially described the deceased as Caucasian. The discovery came after Kaʻū patrol officers responded around 1:10 p.m. to a report of a deceased person inside the home, setting in motion an investigation that would soon focus on the possibility that what happened there was no accident.

As officers and investigators worked the scene, the details they released suggested a grim tableau: a body with injuries serious enough to be described as fatal, and circumstances that raised immediate suspicion. Detectives from the Area II Criminal Investigation Section responded to take over the case, and after early investigative steps, police said they believed the injuries were suspicious in nature rather than accidental. With the victim not yet positively identified at that time, the case was opened as a second-degree murder investigation, even as investigators tried to piece together what led to the death inside that home on the 92-9000 block of Tiki Lane. 
A week later, on October 25, an autopsy provided the key medical finding: a forensic pathologist determined Moriarty’s death was caused by a gunshot wound, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide. With that determination, police publicly identified him as Wayne Richard Moriarty of Ocean View and noted he was also commonly known as Arthur Hackett. The official identification and the autopsy results sharpened the narrative from an initially unidentified death investigation into a confirmed shooting homicide in the Ocean View community. 
After naming Moriarty, investigators renewed their request for help from anyone who might know what happened, emphasizing that the investigation was ongoing. Police directed tips to Detective Donovan Kohara and also highlighted an option for anonymous reporting through Crime Stoppers, including the possibility of a reward of up to $1,000, underscoring that they were still seeking the missing pieces that could explain who pulled the trigger and why. 
Public statements in the available releases did not name a suspect, describe an identified person of interest, or announce any arrest, charge, court filing, trial, or conviction connected to Moriarty’s killing. Instead, the case updates focused on the homicide ruling, the victim’s identification, and the continuing push for information from the public—an indication, at least as reflected in those releases, that investigators were still working to determine responsibility for the shooting death discovered that afternoon on Tiki Lane. 
