Honolulu (AP) – One of the first places Gordon Kordiro visited when a judge ordered him to be released after spending 30 years in prison for murder, which he always maintained that he had nothing to do, was his mother’s tomb.
In an interview with a video conference with the Associated Press on Saturday, Kordiro reflected on his first day of freedom, after new evidence of DNA led to his sentence in the 1994 shooting of Timothy Bladel on Maui Island.
Paullet Cordiro died in September 1994 and her son was arrested next month.
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“Thank you for looking at me,” the son, who said on his grave, remembers, hours after he left the correction center of the Maui Community. “Keep me safe.”
A photo provided by his sister showed that Cordiro knelt on their mother’s grave, with Lei, who was given after release, draped over the tombstone. Written to him were the words: “You were the wind under our wings.”
Kordiro said he was constantly thinking of her mother – who died at the age of 49 by ALS, often called Lou Gerig’s disease – over the years behind bars. He and his sisters were heading for her, taking care of her, and he said he was with her and building shelves for the family when Bladedel was shot fatal during the robbery of drug deals.
After a steak dinner and a visit to the grave, he celebrates with his family at his father’s house and then turned out to be incapable of sleeping a lot. The next day, he went to the graves of other relatives and plans to go to Koreko, he said.
“It feels normal,” he said.
But Maui, who once knew, changed a lot, said Kordiro, noting that the historic city of Lahaine was destroyed by a fire in 2023.
Another thing that needs to get used to: “Everyone is looking at their phones.”
Kordeiro had only a pager before he went to prison, he said. He has a smartphone now, but “I don’t look at it yet. He continues to enter the sound and messages and is different. “
On Friday, there were gasp and shouts in the courtroom when Judge Kirsin Hamman announced that his sentence had been released and he must be released from custody. She decided that the new evidence, including the results of DNA tests, would probably change the result of another test.
Maui District Prosecutor Andrew Martin says he plans to appeal and strive to impose a guarantee for the release of Kordeiro.
The first process of Kordeiro ended with a suspended jury, with only one jury voting to condemn it. But later he was found guilty of murder, robbery and attempted murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of conditional release.
Following the conviction of the Cordiro, the new testing of physical evidence from the scene excludes it as a source of DNA on Blaisdel’s body and other evidence of the crime scene, the Hawaii’s innocence project has been found and the DNA profile of an unidentified person has been found by the internal pockets of Blizdel jeans.
The judge agreed.
“Thank goodness for the new DNA,” Kordeiro said on Saturday. “Technology is great.”
The Zoom interview with AP was the first time he used the platform and an iPad out of prison.
Someone who knows what the Cordiro is going through has reached it on Friday to offer adjustment support: Ian Schweicer, who was released in 2023 after more than 20 years for murder in 1991 and rape on the big island, for Who he says he has not done. The two met in prison at one point, according to Koradeiro.
“We followed the cases of each other as we walked together,” he said. “We both live in the same prison, so we both did with each other as the process was going.”
So far, said Kordiro, his immediate plans include fixing cars, helping his father’s house and “maybe return to the community a little.”