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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APPROACHING 1 a.m. on May 24, 2007, the bar, steps from the Pacific, was rocking. On the dance floor, a few patrons swayed clumsily to jukebox mu sic. Others, like Kauanui, shot pool. Kauanui was accompanied by his girlfriend, Jennifer Grosso, a petite 20-year-old with sandy blonde hair, who ran a flower shop in La Jolla. What happened next is hard to pin down. Witness statements and interviews by detectives with some of the Bandits themselves paint an eye-crossing picture of the brawl, a cloudy image of an alleged murder that only a trial, which Judge Einhorn has yet to schedule, can bring into focus.

Images recorded by a camera in the club that night showed Cravens, House and Yanke throwing hand signs and shouting “BRB for life,” “Bird Rock Bandits, baby,” and “Bandits, Bandits for life” several times during the course of the evening.

By 1 a.m., Kauanui was pretty drunk. (A toxicology report issued after his death, based on blood drawn less than two hours after the attack, indicated traces of marijuana in Emery’s system and a blood alcohol level of .13 —high enough to earn him a DUI, if he’d been driving.) At some point, Kauanui apparently spilled a drink on Eric House.

“You don’t want to do that,” House said, jokingly. “I could knock you out with one punch.”

Sources close to the case call the “spilled drink” theory behind the fight nonsense. “Eric and Emery were eager to get this on,” says one. “Their paths had crossed before.”

Another friend says, “Seth and those other kids in the Bandits instigated the fight. They wanted it to escalate, even though they knew Emery. It was fun to them, to go out and take on people.”

Kauanui cursed at House. Brew House security intervened. As he and Grosso exit ed, House and Cravens followed them out side. “You want to fight?” one of them said. “You know we will beat your ass. Emery, you don’t want to f--- with us.” Kauanui lunged at the two Bandits. Grosso held her boyfriend back and put him in his car—in the passenger seat.

Grosso drove Kauanui home, a half-mile, to the well-appointed condo on Draper Avenue where the surfer lived with his mom. That night, Cindy was away in Hawaii, visiting friends. The young couple went inside, but at 1:16 a.m., Kauanui walked out to the sidewalk and called Cravens on his cell phone, talking for one minute, 21 seconds.

Believing, incorrectly, that the testosterone-fueled clash had cooled, Grosso set off on foot back to the Brew House to retrieve her car. There, she saw Cravens, House, Osuna and Hendricks in an alley next to the bar.

“Don’t call him,” Cravens said, as he and the other Bandits climbed into a dark SUV owned by Yanke and driven by Osuna. “Don’t call him. Let’s just go . . . Let’s go f--- him up.”

Cell phone records show that Kauanui called House at 1:34 a.m., a call that lasted 31 seconds. At 1:36, driving back to Kauanui’s place from The Brew House, Grosso tried to call her boyfriend. Kauanui didn’t answer.

Outside his mother’s condo, the SUV pulled up, and a number of the Bandits disembarked. Kauanui stripped off his shirt. Yanke and Osuna were on the scene. House appeared to be the main instigator of the brawl, which seemed to progress in two waves, with Kauanui being punched and kicked by multiple attackers, then rallying to vanquish them.

After the second wave, Kauanui fell to the ground. Terrified, Grosso honked her horn at the attackers, then exited her car and kicked House in the back, to get him away from her boy friend, screaming all the while. Hendricks yanked Grosso off House. Grosso called 911.

House had lost a tooth in the fight, and Kauanui, happy about his performance in a melee against so many brawlers, stood up, bare-chested, his arms and fists raised in celebration.

“You got me,” House called out. “You got me. It’s over.”

It wasn’t.

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