The Honolulu Strangler (He Totally Did It.)

Today we're taking the train to a land of paradise. Warm climate, great surf, beautiful women, and…. the Honolulu Strangler? That's right we're taking a trip to Hawaii and the land of unsolved murders. You know how we like our unsolved crimes here at the midnight train! So without further ado… Let's get into what we do know about the case and see if we can solve it like we do with so many other things. 

 

So the Honolulu Strangler was a serial killer who was active between 1985-1986. He tortured and killed 5 women. The five victims were found with their hands bound behind their backs, sexually assaulted and strangled. The strangler’s victims ranged in ages between 17 and 36 and came from different walks of life. The police had several suspects including one that… Well… is most likely the killer but… You know, the police let him go. Well get to him in a bit. First we are going to discuss the victims and then the few suspects they had. There's not a huge amount of information out there. Every source has the same information so we'll give you what we have found. 

 

 Let's start with the victims. 

 

The first victim was Vicki Gail Purdy. She was an attractive, petite 25 year old blonde who was a transplant from North Carolina. She lived in Miliani with her husband Gary. Gary was stationed in Hawaii as a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army. Vicki worked at the Wahiawa Video Rental store, which was a point of contention between her and Gary. Gary Purdy had long objected to his wife’s place of work, for the video store was known to sell pornographic films. The police found that Vicki liked to go dancing at clubs with her friends. On May 29 Vicki went to a club with a couple friends in Waikiki. Gary was expecting her back around 9. When she did not return home Gary started to page Vicki and continued to page her throughout the night. For you young kids out there, a pager is what you used to get ahold of someone before there were cell phones. You'd get a page and then you'd have to find this thing called a pay phone to call the number back. A PayPhone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card.… It was nuts! At any rate… the next morning Gary finds his wife's car in the parking lot of the Shorebird Hotel. Police were contacted by a cab driver who said he had dropped Vicki off there the night before sometime around midnight. Vicki's body was found the morning of may 30th on an embankment near Keehi Lagoon. She was found with her hands tied behind her back. She had been raped, then strangled, and then killed. At first the police checked out any possible connection to the video store. On top of Gary not liking her working there, the store had a bit of a reputation already. In December of 1984, two women, a worker and the co-owner of the store, were stabbed to death at the store. Police initially took the angle that a porn obsessed man had stalked and killed Vicki. After investigation though police could find no link to the video store and the crime. They were back to square one. Her husband, Gary Purdy was a chief warrant officer with the 24th Aviation Battalion. At six feet tall and 165 pounds, he could obviously handle his own. He told media Purdy she had once “knocked the —- out of me” during an argument. He believed it would have taken two people to nab her. 

 

Victim number two was 17 year old Regina Sakamoto. Regina was petite like Vicki, but moreso. She was only 4'11" and weighed only 105lbs. Also like Vicki, Regina was a transplant. She was originally from Kansas. People said Regina was a shy quiet girl who had planned on attending college in Hawaii in the fall. Regina's father was a military serviceman stationed in Hawaii. On January 14,1986 Regina spoke with her boyfriend at around 7:15am. She had told him that she would be late as she was not catching her usual bus. She would be missing for about a month after this. In February her body was found. She had been bound with her hands behind her back, raped and strangled just like Vicki. Oh and she was found near Keehi Lagoon as well… Same as Vicki. 

  After the discovery of Regina's body, homicide detectives became convinced they had a serial killer on their hands. Due to the fact that both women were found with their hands tied behind their backs, both had been raped, and both had been strangled, police surmised the cases were linked. Add to that they were both found in the same area, and it was all but assured.  The Keehi Lagoon area was part of an urban beach park. There was ready access to the ocean and it was dotted with tiny islands. It was fairly secluded and made for a good dumping ground for the killer. 

 

Two weeks after Regina Sakamoto disappeared, but before her body was found, the killer struck again. This time it was 21 year old Denise Hughes that was the victim. Denise was a native of Washington state. Like Regina, she was also used to using the bus system and regularly took the bus to and from work. Denise failed to show up to work at her job as a secretary for a phone company. Police suspect she met the killer at the bus stop or on the bus. In February, three fishermen would find her body. There were a few differences between her body and the first two. First off she was found near Moanalua stream and not by Keehi Lagoon. Second, her body was wrapped in a blue tarp. Despite these differences and the fact that the body was pretty decomposed, they were able to assess that it was the same killer, due to the fact that she'd been bound the same way and strangled. Regina's brother would later do an interview with khon2.com and say

 

           “She was late for school that day,” “It was in Waipahu. She was sitting at the bus stop in front of Diners in Waipahu.”

 

Her brother was in 5th grade at the time. He would go on to say:

 

       "I used to look up to her. She’d babysit me and stuff like that", adding that she was “very bookish, smart, fun loving, everybody’s friend, that kind of thing.”

 

 When asked about revisiting the case, her brother says he wished they could test for DNA. Unfortunately they could only test for blood type at the time. 

 

“It’s kind of sad that both my parents, you know, they’re not here to, even if it does get resolved, they’re not here to see it,” Omar Sakamoto said. “I just want, what is that, closure.”

 

This interview was about 5 years ago when there was talk of reopening the case or at least revisiting some of the evidence. 

 

The killings prompted the Honolulu Police Department to form a task force that included an FBI profiler who helped put together a profile of the person they believed could be the suspect.

 

He was described as a Caucasian male in his 30s to 40s with no criminal record. The profiler also suspected the killer targeted women near where he lived or worked.

 

“He’s an individual who may be, at this particular juncture, may be experiencing girlfriend or marital problems and the selection of victims is probably the result of opportunity or chance encounters,” former Honolulu Police Chief Douglas Gibb said back in 1986.

 

Former homicide lieutenant Gary Dias was the head of HPD’s homicide detail at the time. “DNA could’ve been a much greater asset for us in that particular case,” Dias said, “and it’s useless in today’s age, because 82 percent of the world are types O and A.”

 

“Digital evidence is extremely important toward the advancement of investigations,” Dias said. Unfortunately back then, there was no cell phone video, and surveillance video wasn’t common. 

 

The next victim was 25 year old Louise Medeiros. According to a newspaper article we found from Hawaii from 1986, Louise J. Medeiros was a young woman who had lived much of life before she knew how to live it anyway. She'd left her large family on Kauai as a teenager, opting for independence and uncertainty on her own on Oahu. In six years, she'd returned to Kauai once, for a bowling tournament, and then only called home. She'd been on welfare, gotten in trouble with the law and lived with beach people at Makaha. Three months pregnant when she was killed, the 25-year-old had never married, had three children and a daughter in a foster home. But most of the family worries about their prodigal sister were soothed when Louise came home in March for a reading of her mother's will. The family found her centered and motivated, no longer the alienated rebel. Then the day after the reunion she was gone... abducted, police assume, from a bus stop near the airport on the evening of March 26. "She was finally happy. She had found peace within herself," recalled her eldest sister, Brenda Durant, of the last visit. "We were lying in my bedroom. She'd laugh

and laugh." On March 26, 1986,

Medeiros boarded a red-eye flight to Oahu. From there, Medeiros told her family that she planned to take a bus to Waipahu in order to meet them following the tragic death of their mother. Medeiros was last seen alive leaving the plane after it landed in Honolulu.

 

Medeiros's body was found by construction workers on April 2 near the Waikele Stream. Like the other four victims, Medeiros was found partially clothed. (The  killer always removed the pants and undergarments and left his victims nude from the waist down.) She had also had her hands tied behind her back. Medeiros had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

 

In order to catch the killer, the HPD began sending their female officers undercover to the Honolulu International Airport and to Keehi Lagoon. By now, it was clear that the killer favored out-of-town victims or those with limited connections to Hawaii.

 

The killer's last known victim was 36 year old Linda Pesce. Her roommate would be the last person to see her alive. Her roommate said she saw Linda when she left home on the morning of April 29, 1986.  The next morning the roommate was informed that Linda had not shown up for work. This was odd to the roommate. She was informed a little later that Lindas car had been found near a viaduct on route 92/interstate H-1. It was at this point the roommate reported her missing to the police.  Motorists claimed that on the evening of April 29 they saw the car’s emergency lights flashing, indicating it had stalled. They also described a Caucasian or mixed ancestry man in his 30s or 40s, of medium build, and a cream-colored, american made van with letters on its rear windows, both beside Pesce’s vehicle. 

 

In May of 2018, the TV show Breaking Homicide returned to the case and the show’s investigators suggested that the Honolulu Strangler may have also killed 19-year-old Lisa Au in 1982. Au was last seen alive just after midnight on January 21, 1982. Her car was later found near Kapaa Quarry Road. Ten days later, on January 31, 1982, a jogger found Au’s nude, decomposing body on Tantalus Lookout in Waikiki. Police were never able to officially list Au’s cause of death.

 

Ok, now… This is where shit kinda gets crazy! Depending on the source things get a little mixed up. We've found at least two different accounts of what happened next but they both involve the same man, a man who most people think is the killer. 

 

The first story we found was that an unidentified(at the time) 43 year old white male came to the police claiming that a psychic (also unidentified) told him where Linda Pesces body was. He said the psychic informed him the body was located on Sand Island. The man then led police to a spot on the island but Pesces body was not there. Police decided to search the entire island and then found her body. She had been strangled and her hands were bound with parachute cord like the other victims. From what I've encountered on this particular part of the story, he purposely did not go near the spot where they eventually found her body. Sounds sus af. And that just sounded weird coming from me. Moving on.

 

OK so that's the first version of the story. We found another version that goes a little something like this:

 

The as yet unidentified mean first came to police attention when Linda Pesce’s body had not yet been found. He voluntarily presented himself to the authorities claiming he had found some bones on Sand Island. When investigators processed the bones they discovered they were from a pig. The man was put under surveillance and, on May 9, was arrested due to circumstantial evidence linking him to the serial killings. 

 

So we found both of these stories in several different places and wanted to present them both. From here on out everything pretty much lines up through most sources. 

 

So who the hell is this guy? Well it would come out much later that the mans name was Howard Gay Dutcher. So who was Howard Gay and why was he considered the prime suspect even though he'd helped find the body of Linda Pesce? Let's have a look at this guy shall we? 

 

Gay was born in 1943 in Buffalo, New York. Not much is known about his personal history other than he joined the army and was stationed at George Air Force Base, a 30-minute drive from Apple Valley, California, where he lived for fifteen years. He was eventually discharged in 1965. Gay attended Victor Valley College, received his associate degree, and was employed by Continental Telephone in Victorville, where he held jobs as a lineman and teletype repairman. In the same year as his discharge, he married Rita Thompson, his college sweetheart, and fathered two children with her: Justin and Jason. In 1968, he was employed by Flying Tiger Line at Los Angeles International Airport. Gay’s role was to train cargo aircraft mechanics around the world and, in 1980, he was relocated to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Howard lived in a rented three-bedroom home in Ewa Beach. He divorced from his wife in 1983. One day, his family decided to surprise him by traveling to Honolulu, but when they showed up he was upset and even refused to let them in his home. He made them stay in a hotel and shipped them back to California two days later. His neighbors told reporters he was a gentleman, always willing to help others. A female assistant manager who worked at La Mariana Sailing Club in 1986 recognized Gay as a man who routinely stared at her, asked her to accept rides from him, and once reacted furiously when she once again refused. 

 

The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit profiled the Honolulu Strangler as being a Caucasian male in his late 30s or early 40s who had no prior criminal record and may have been experiencing marital or girlfriend problems at the time. It said the killer may have lived or worked in the area between Sand Island and Waipahu. He was also an opportunist who cruised for victims and struck when opportunity presented itself, rather than a stalker who chose his victims. And due to prior witnesses, they had suspected the killer drove a cream colored van with words on the back. 

 

All of these things fit Gay to a T.  On May 9th 1986, police arrested Gay. Gays girlfriend had started to police the he like bondage sex and would routinely tie her up with her hands behind her back, like the victims. Another way he fit the profile and the police thought him to be a viable suspect is that his ex wife told police that each killing coincides with a domestic dispute the couple had. The ex wife says that Gay would leave the house after the fights and would not return until the next day.  On top of that he was connected to all the crime scenes since he worked at the airport (near where most of the victims were dumped) and lived in close proximity to Waipahu, where two victims disappeared and Louise Medeiros’ body was found. He also drove a cream-colored, american made van with letters on its rear windows, had a vasectomy like the man who raped three of the victims, and possibly had access to parachute cord due to his job. If that were not enough, Linda Pesce’s boss claimed she had written down Gay’s phone number on a note pad on the day she disappeared, since at that time Linda was looking for customers in the airport area. Gay offered to take a polygraph examination which (depending on the source)  gave an inconclusive result, or a failure result, and consented to a search at his home.  Despite all the elements against him, he was released after being held and questioned for ten hours, since prosecutors Peter Carlisle and Michael McGuigan decided they had insufficient evidence to win a case. 

 

Two months after the arrest a woman came forward to claim she'd seen Linda chatting with a man the night she disappeared. The woman was brought in and shown a lineup and picked Gays photo out of the line up. The woman said she did not want to be a witness as she was scared because the man had seen her as well. 

 

So what happened to Gay after this. Well… We'll tell ya. The killings stopped after Gay’s arrest and release. After his release he stated, “The police have released me, that’s all I know. They (the investigators) have plenty of good cause. They’re doing their job”..Gay returned to California in June 1986 to see his son, Jason, graduate from high school. Three days later, Jason was killed in an automobile accident, while changing a tire on the side of the road which prompted Howard to become a born-again Christian. Gay later worked for FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee, presumably when the latter acquired Flying Tiger Line, in 1988. He died of kidney failure in November of 2003. 

 

We found his obituary… Not one mention of his time in Hawaii...it reads as follows: 

 

Howard Gay lived in Apple Valley, California, for fifteen years. He was stationed at George Air Force Base, where he was honorably discharged in 1965. He attended Victor Valley College, where he received his associate degree. Howard was employed at Continental Telephone in Victorville, California, as a lineman and later a teletype repairman. In 1968, he was employed by Flying Tiger Lines at LAX, and later Federal Express in Memphis, Tennessee. Howard traveled throughout the world, training aircraft mechanics on airframe and powerplant systems on large cargo planes.

 

Interesting….

 

At any rate, police spoke to many people and followed other leads on cream colored vans and things like that. Nothing solid ever came from anything else other than the Howard Gay stuff. Police that worked the case spoke years later and they all are certain that Gay was the killer. Unfortunately since he is dead and since no DNA evidence is available we may never actually get a solid answer on this case, despite there being a reward of $25,000. This seems to be one of those weird unsolved cases that everyone seems to know who did it. Crazy case! 

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