Tropical Underworld: The Murder Case That Could Topple an Alleged Crime Empire
Michael Miske is accused of being a drug kingpin who plotted the revenge killing of his son’s best friend. His trial, on Oahu, stands to expose a world that few outside Hawaii even knew existed.
In the months before he vanished in July 2016, Johnathan Fraser found himself returning again and again to the same vape shop, one of the last places he’d seen his best friend. Fraser and Caleb Miske, both 21, had been close since their childhood on Oahu, the Hawaiian island where both were born. They’d once lived together with their girlfriends in an apartment near Pearl Harbor. Fraser and Caleb shared a love of cars and founded a racing club called Mad Motor Industries. One night in November 2015, they were speeding in Caleb’s Honda when they collided with a pickup truck. The car was totaled, and they were transported from the scene in critical condition.
At the hospital there was tension between their families. A police report indicated that Caleb had been behind the wheel, but his father, Michael Miske Jr., refused to believe it. He insisted that Fraser was driving and blamed him for the crash. “You could feel the turmoil,” recalls Fraser’s aunt Jean Tangaro. Miske’s mother, Maydeen Stancil, says: “Caleb was my son’s whole world. Everything he did, he did for Caleb.”