Murder in Paradise?

The brutal beating death of professional surfer Emery Kauanui turns upscale La Jolla upside down, leaving five rogue brawlers—the self-styled Bird Rock Bandits—facing trial on homicide charges.

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Windansea’s informal protectors became known as the Windansea Rats. “The Rats aren’t a gang as much as they’re a group of kids who like to sit on the beach, drink beer and surf,” says Mike Powers, 31, a former professional surfer who organized a memorial paddle-out at Windansea after Emery Kauanui died. “They’re all mellow local kids who are into having fun and aren’t violent. They harass people from time to time, but nothing abnormal. When this happens, other locals circle around to monitor the fight, but they don’t jump in.”

The Pump House Gang, arrogant localists that they were—“They attended the Watts riots as if it were the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena,” wrote Wolfe—had been even less confrontational. Of their attitude toward crass outsiders, Wolfe observed: “Nobody in the Pump House Gang would ever jostle these people or say anything right to them; they are too cool for that.”

Out in the water at Windansea, Kauanui never behaved like a Rat. Kind of skinny, at 5-foot-10 and 155 pounds, with a wide nose, full lips and a contagious smile, he was the model of the conscientious waterman. “Respect the ocean,” he once wrote, “and don’t be a kook” (someone who back paddles, cuts someone off, litters or gets in the way).

Although Kauanui wasn’t a top-flight professional—he supported himself working in a sushi restaurant and delivering flowers—he was sponsored by Rip Curl, Jen Optics and Placebo Surfboards, as well as Liquid Foundation, a popular surf shop on Mission Boulevard.

“Emery had a clean style, with powerful turns,” says owner Todd Bartlett. “He could link multiple tricks together and make it look effortless.” Called The Flyin’ Kauian, after the Hawaiian island where he spent much of his childhood, Kauanui also earned a reputation for skillfully ripping Windansea’s inside left.

At Windansea, Cravens, who didn’t surf, gained notoriety for being an asshole. Although he “whomped,” or body surfed, the shore break on occasion, he preferred sitting on the sand and pounding cocktails. Of Samoan heritage, the second youngest in a family of 14 children, Cravens was bigger than Kauanui, at 6 feet, 220 pounds, with close-cropped hair and piercing blue eyes. Like most of his fellow Bird Rock Bandits, Cravens didn’t attend college or have a fulltime job.

“Seth always had anger-management problems,” says a La Jolla High teacher. “Seth knew he wasn’t somebody people wanted to pal around with, so he had to find a way to assert himself. He thrived on physical confrontation as a way to resolve disputes.” Instead of the waves at Windansea, Cravens chose as his turf the village of La Jolla itself.

THOUGH THEY WERE La Jolla counterparts who both came from Hawaii, Kauanui and Cravens had taken different paths once they’d arrived in Southern California. Kauanui’s dad, Emery Sr., was a fixture on the lush island of Kauai, a well-known surfer, guitar player, singer and brawler, on an island where territorialism is as ingrained in the culture as big waves.

“The Hawaiian thing—they’re always fighting,” says Powers. “Emery’s dad comes from that. Emery’s dad wanted him to stand up for himself, and Emery ended up in a few fights with fellow Hawaiians, who picked on him. But Emery got over that. He didn’t like that life.”

Emery Jr., whose middle name, Keauiikane, means “royal one” in Hawaiian, became known as “Junior Boy” around Kauai and demonstrated his bond to the place by having the string of Hawaiian Islands tattooed on his left calf. Even his mom, Cindy, a blonde former model, was an avid surfer. She handled the barrel at Kalihiwai, on Kauai, and joked to friends that she could surf in high heels.

That Cindy, Junior Boy and his younger brother, Nigel, ended up in La Jolla was due to a fluke of nature. In 1992, years after Cindy divorced Emery Sr.—and husband and wife, in divorce filings, accused each other of mistreating the boys—Hurricane Iniki smashed into Kauai, destroying Cindy’s home and the school where her sons were enrolled. Because she had a sister who lived in Poway, Cindy moved to San Diego. Money was scarce.

“We left Hawaii with the clothes on our back,” Cindy remembers. “The boys were in bare feet and had no shoes until we got to California. We relied on the charity of friends, family and church donations until I finally qualified for an SBA [Small Business Administration] loan and started my business.”

Nigel says he and Emery, island boys at heart, never felt completely at ease in suburban, predominantly white La Jolla. “It wasn’t home,” says Nigel, an aspiring musician who, since Emery died, has moved back to Hawaii with his mother. “We never felt like we really wanted to be there. We felt separate.”

In elementary school, Nigel became friendly with Seth Cravens. “He’d bully everyone in the school,” Nigel recalls. But Cravens, perhaps sensitive to the plight of the outsider, left Nigel alone. “Seth figured, ‘I’m from Hawaii, he’s from Hawaii,’ and that was reason not to mess with me.”

The same went for Emery, too, at least until last spring.

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