The title sounds sensational until you learn that "taboo" is the only English word that comes from Tongan. Tonga is the tiny Polynesian island kingdom where, in 1976, one Peace Corps volunteer murdered another.

After the verdict ("Not Guilty Because He Was Insane at the Time He Committed the Act," or something like that) the killer returned to the US and walked free. The US governernment, with the accused's parents, had promised the Tongan government that if he returned to the US they would see to it that he was institutionalized, with or without his consent.

Turns out they couldn't really promise that. That, or they had no intention of keeping their word.

It's a lot of sad stories: the story of a young woman dying a violent death; the story of an incompetent and delusional Peace Corps country director making a mess out of relations with host country, not to mention her own volunteers; the story of a government agency hushing up an important story out of an instinct for self-preservation.

The saddest, most shameful story of all is how the US government virtually abandoned the victim's family, while they went to extraordinary (and not exactly legal) lengths to defend the accused and extricate him from the host country. Just as one example: after the Tongan jury reached their verdict, Peace Corps/ Tonga immediately sent a telegraph to the accused's parents in New York, telling them "all very happy here." They never contacted the victim's parents. Her mother heard the news on the radio two days later.