{"id":1718,"date":"2026-06-23T07:05:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1718"},"modified":"2026-06-23T07:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:05:02","slug":"friends-family-seek-answers-50-years-after-north-shore-disappearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1718","title":{"rendered":"Friends, family seek answers 50 years after North Shore disappearance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<section>\n<p>HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; On May 20, 1976, Robby McDonald vanished after telling roommates he was going to deliver hashish and collect a drug debt.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1716\">\u2018One Year to Forever\u2019 filmmaker shares love for hometown Lahaina<\/a><\/p>\n<p>He was 22 years old.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years later, friends and family are still grieving and hoping for an end to the mystery.<\/p>\n<p>McDonald was a surfer and competitive motorcycle racer. His then-girlfriend, Shirley Rogers, said, \u201cHe had gone to meet these two guys and never came back.\u201d<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Rogers was McDonald\u2019s classmate at Campbell High School. They had moved together to the North Shore with McDonald\u2019s parents, a high school teacher and retired Army officer.<\/p>\n<h2>Building a life together<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cWe were building our house and we had pretty much figured our life out at that point,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n<p>Rogers said she was in Indonesia when she heard the news.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got a telegram in Bali that Rob\u2019s been gone a week, come home, and my legs just buckled. I just knew he was gone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody was talking about it because it was a pretty newsworthy item, even amongst us,\u201d said former deputy chief John McCarthy, who was a rookie at the time and involved in the search.<\/p>\n<p>McDonald\u2019s red Toyota truck was found at Swanzy Beach Park, miles away from where he was last seen near Malaekahana Beach Park.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut in this case, no body was found. There were no leads. It became more and more mysterious,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n<h2>Family conducted their own search<\/h2>\n<p>Rogers said she believes police did not take the case seriously because McDonald was selling hash.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe combed the mountains on motorcycles. We questioned neighbors. We talked to everybody in that area,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n<p>The family nailed posters to poles and offered higher and higher rewards, at first seeking tips to police but eventually just hoping to find the body.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1714\">New law to expand affordable homeownership opportunities in Hawaii<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were wonderful parents and I watched them grieve every day until they both died,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think not knowing is worse than actually knowing what the person went through, how he was murdered and who did it,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>McCarthy said the North Shore was a dangerous place to sell drugs, with organized gangs in control who often enforced territory with murder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were a bunch of people that happened to. That\u2019s why I said that this isn\u2019t the only case. It\u2019s just one of the unsolved ones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Rogers said, \u201cI certainly never would have allowed him to do it if I\u2019d been there, but you know he was just an easygoing trusting naive guy. We were so innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Lawsuit ended with confidential settlement<\/h2>\n<p>Police questioned two suspects but made no arrests. Years later the family sued the suspects and the owners of a property where McDonald may have been killed.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>During a deposition, one of the suspects repeatedly claimed the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. The lawsuit ended with a confidential settlement and no admission of guilt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of times there\u2019s a privacy agreement or something to keep everything closed so that the information doesn\u2019t get out,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey seemingly got away with it after all this time,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite becoming a successful and celebrated surf photographer, and even appearing on Magnum P.I., Rogers said she is still haunted by the loss.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d like to bury him. His poor mother and father, it was horrible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The two men identified as suspects are still alive, but did not respond to attempts to reach them. Hawaii News Now is not naming them because they were never charged.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1712\">Dwayne Johnson, Catherine Laga\u2019aia on Polynesian representation in live-action \u2018Moana\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The case is still officially classified as a missing person.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 20, 1976, Robby McDonald told his roommates he was going to deliver hashish and collect a drug debt. He was never seen again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Friends, family seek answers 50 years after North Shore disappearance - Hawaii Moving Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hawaiimovinginsider.com\/?p=1718\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friends, family seek answers 50 years after North Shore disappearance - Hawaii Moving Insider\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On May 20, 1976, Robby McDonald told his roommates he was going to deliver hashish and collect a drug debt. 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