Grieving family speaks out

After the shock of hearing Kehndra was murdered, the Isaksons' grief was compounded by the fact that Tiliaia insisted on a jury trial, which meant seemingly endless delays and postponements, listening to grisly details of Kehndra's last minutes and, despite a jury verdict of guilty, a sense of hollow victory.

"You don't win," Ken Isakson said. "At the very end, you get everything they could give you and you still don't win. You don't get your daughter back."

Tiliaia now is seeking a new trial, claiming new evidence will exonerate him. A hearing on his motion is Wednesday.

Along with a painful education in how the criminal justice system works, the Isakson family also has learned that losing a loved one to murder is very different from a natural death.

The pain is different, the mourning is different, the healing is different.

Among other things, the randomness of a traumatic death can have a powerful effect on survivors.

Christopher Layne, an assistant psychology professor at Brigham Young University, said one of the "grief-related tasks" that survivors of traumatic death deal with is trying to find a meaning for a shocking and violent demise.

"The families of firefighters and policemen who perished in 9-11 are suffering immensely but understand their loved ones died trying to save others. They died for a purpose," Layne said. "When someone dies for no reason, or for no good reason, it can make it much more difficult for survivors to come up with an answer that is acceptable," Layne said.

Another difficulty for mourners are "secondary stressors that can assume a life of their own," which include everything from arranging a funeral to dealing with the legal system, Layne said.

They were fairly comfortable with prosecutor Jeffrey Hunt, but Ken Isakson at first was put off by lead prosecutor Sirena Wissler, a petite young woman with delicate features. Ken Isakson said he felt the case of his precious murdered daughter was being palmed off on some rookie.

"Did I ever have her wrong," he said, speaking admiringly of Wissler's passionate prosecution. "We thank God every day we were blessed with Sirena."

One unhappy surprise for the Isaksons was how much postponement and rescheduling occurs — through no one's fault — when a major crime wends its way through the system.

"Every day is a challenge," Ken Isakson said. "You get up, get dressed, put on your best suit and best tie, drive all the way to the courthouse and someone whispers to you, 'It's been changed to next week,' or 'It's next month.' It's emotional anyway just to get there."

Then they had to face Tiliaia, presumed innocent until proven guilty, with constitutionally protected rights, who is entitled to free legal representation and, to their horror, seemed to show no remorse.