The Massie Trial, for what was known as the Massie Affair, was a 1932 criminal trial that took place in Honolulu, Hawaii Territory. Socialite Grace Fortescue, along with several accomplices, was charged with the murder of the well-known local prizefighter Joseph Kahahawai. Fortescue was the mother of Thalia Massie, who had brought charges that Kahahawai was one of a group of men who had raped her. Background Massie family Grace Hubbard Fortescue, née Grace Hubbard Bell, was the granddaughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the first president of the National Geographic Society. Her father, Charles James Bell, was first cousin of inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Her marriage to Major Roland Granville "Rolly" Fortescue, an out-of-wedlock son of Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, did not leave her as financially successful as she would have wished, but she nevertheless kept up appearances and raised her daughter, Thalia, with an American upper class lifestyle. Grace Thalia Fortescue married Lieutenant Thomas Massie, a rising United States Navy officer. In 1930, Massie arrived at Pearl Harbor, where Thalia considered herself "above" the rest of the officers' wives and soon became an outcast. The marriage, apparently not terribly successful to start with, degenerated into heavy drinking and public fights. Thalia had a second miscarriage shortly prior to the incident, and was "on probation" with her husband, who wrote an informal set of conditions under which he would continue the marriage. Honolulu Police In 1931, the Honolulu police force was bitterly split between two factions: the McIntosh faction, led by Captain Nelson McIntosh, which consisted mostly of white officers; and the Hao faction, led by Deputy Sheriff David Hao, which consisted mostly of police officers of Hawaiian heritage. Both factions had political backing McIntosh was the choice of Hawaii's business elite, while Hao had the backing of still politically powerful Hawaiian royalty. McIntosh was regarded as a racist by indigenous Hawaiians, while Hao's faction was considered corrupt by McIntosh's faction. Patrick K. Gleason, the sheriff of Honolulu, tried to keep peace within his department as he needed the votes of both factions to win re-election. Things got particularly heated in August 1931, when Hao was forced into retirement. While the retirement itself was not finalized, McIntosh temporarily took over his position, with all of the detectives formally reporting to him. However, as McIntosh was hostile to detectives from Hao's faction, Sheriff Gleason would give some of them direct assignments, thus