The Honolulu Strangler was Hawaii’s first known serial killer and responsible for the deaths of five women in Honolulu in 1985 and 1986. The killer bound his female victim’s hands behind their backs, and then would rape and assault them, before killing them by strangulation and dumping their bodies.
His victims were from all walks of life making it difficult to pinpoint where he might strike next. The victims ranged in ages between 17 and 36. The Honolulu Police Department had twenty-seven people working on the serial killer task force, who were working in conjunction with the FBI and Green River task force.
They managed to profile the serial killer as an opportunist, attacking women in vulnerable situations and places, like at bus stops, rather than stalking his victims. The profile suggested that the serial killer most likely worked or lived in the area of the attacks, Waipahu or Sand Island.
Police set up roadblocks to question commuters. Witnesses came forward who claimed to have seen a light colored van and a Caucasian man with a victim’s car. The only suspect was a mechanic on Lagoon Drive on Ewa Beach.
After being arrested, the suspect was interrogated between 8pm and 3am and failed a polygraph test. Despite police believing they had their killer, the evidence was only circumstantial and he was released.
Police followed the suspect and a $25,000 reward was put out by private businesses. Two months later, a woman came forward, claiming that she had seen a man with one of the victims on the night she was murdered.
The witness successfully picked the suspect out of a photo line-up as the man. However, she didn’t want to be a witness because she believed the suspect saw her as well and she was frightened for her safety.
After that, no similarly styled murders were committed and the reward was never claimed. The main suspect moved to the mainland. In 2005, the suspect died in California or Tennessee, and the case went cold.
The first victim was Vicky Gail Purdy, age 25, who worked at a pornographic film rental shop, and was married to Army Helicopter Pilot Gary Purdy. Her husband told police he suspected her death to be associated with her job, where two women were stabbed to death a year earlier.
On May 29, 1985, Vicky had left to go clubbing in Waikiki, but had failed to meet up with her friends. Her last known whereabouts was the Shoreline Hotel around midnight, where a taxi driver drove her apparently to retrieve her car, which was found later in the hotel parking lot.
Alarms were raised when she failed to return home. The next morning her body was found in an embankment at Keehi Lagoon still dressed in her yellow jumpsuit from the previous night. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been raped and strangled.
The second victim was Regina Sakamoto, age 17, a student at Leilehua High School. On January 14, 1986, at 7:15am, Regina called her boyfriend to tell him she would be late to school because she had missed her bus from Walpahu.
That was the last time anyone heard from her. The next day, her body was found at Keehi Lagoon, wearing her blue tank top and white sweatshirt but her lower body was unclothed. Like Vicky, her hands were bound behind her back and she had been raped and strangled.
This link, along with the connection to Keehi Lagoon, led police to suspect they were looking for the same killer. Regina was planning on attending Hawaii Pacific University in the fall.
The third victim was Denise Hughes, age 21. She was a secretary for a telephone company and was active in her Christian Church. On January 30, 1986, Denise, who always took the bus for transportation, failed to show up for work.
On February 1st, her body was found in Moanalua Stream by three young fisherman. Her decomposing body was clothed in a blue dress, and wrapped in a blue tarp. Like the other victims, Denise had her hands bonus behind her back, and had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Prompted by a third body, a serial killer task force was established on February 5th.
The fourth victim was Louise Medeiros, age 25. She lived in Waipahu but had gone to Kauai to meet her extended family because of the death of her mother. On March 26, Louise took a red-eye flight back to Oahu, telling her family that she would get home from the airport via the bus.
She landed at Oahu, got off the plane and wasn’t seen again until her body was found nearStream by road workers on April 2nd. Her body was decomposing. She was wearing her blouse but her lower body was unclothed, and her hands were bound behind her back. Police and investigators set up sting operations using police women around Keehi Lagoon and the Honolulu International Airport.
The fifth and last known victim of the Honolulu Strangler was Linda Pesce, age 36. On April 29th, she left home for work that evening, according to her roommate. At 7:00pm, 30 minutes later, her car was parked on the side of the Nimitz-H1 viaduct. Her roommate reported her missing the next day.
A 43-year-old Caucasian man went to police, claiming that a psychic told him there was a body on Sand Island, but there was no body discovered. However, police searched the island and found Linda’s unclothed body with her hands bound behind her back, just like all the other victims.
When Linda’s body was found, police arrested the informant as their primary suspect. Interviews with the suspect’s ex-wife and girlfriend provided incriminating evidence, with both describing him as a smooth talker, and both saying that they engaged in sexual activities, where he had tied their hands behind their backs and then had sex with him.
His girlfriend also told police that on the nights of the murders they had fought, and the suspect had left the house. The dead bodies appearing on every one of those corresponding dates.
Swaying palm trees, beautiful blue water, and beaches all describe paradise in Hawaii. Unfortunately, the Honolulu Strangler has made this paradise his killing field, leaving a mystery still unsolved. Hopefully the investigators hunches were right, and the main suspect was really the killer. This assumption doesn’t give justice to the victims or closure to their families, but it may give vacationers a little piece of mind.
Along with the Honolulu Strangler are four other murderous situations and stories that took place in paradise. While Hawaii is sometimes considered to be safer than many locales in America, the state still experiences bloodshed, and these homicide cases are evidence of that.
On November 2, 1999, Xerox service technician Byran Uyegusi killed his supervisor and six of his co-workers. He fired in the direction of another co-worker who fled the building and escaped injury. Byran was born in Honolulu in 1959.
When Byran attended high school, he was a member of the school’s Army ROTC chapter and rifle team. At the time of the murders Byran had as many as 25 guns registered in his name, dating to 1982. Police also recovered 11 handguns, 5 rifles and 2 shotguns from Byran’s father.
Soon after graduating high school, Byran crashed his father’s car, hitting his head on the windshield. According to his brother, Dennis, Byran was never the same. He had been employed by Xerox as a technician since 1984, and his co-workers had difficulty dealing with him.
Byran reportedly made threats against other co-worker’s lives. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation and anger management courses. As early as 1995, Byran was openly talking of carrying out a mass shooting at the workplace if he was fired.
Leading up to the shootings, Xerox management had become increasingly committed to phasing out the type of photocopier that Byran serviced. His manager insisted on November 1, that he would begin training on the new machine the next day.
Byran believed that if he refused to take the training, management would fire him. He told Dr. Weiner in an interview, “I decided to give them a reason to fire me.”
Byran’s month-long trial began on May 15, 2000. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Dr. Weiner testified that although Byran was in his opinion a schizophrenic, he carried out the shooting because he was angry that he would be fired for insubordination, and that he knew what he did was wrong.
Byran was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and is now held at a facility in Mississippi, due to inadequate accommodations for a prisoner in isolation at Halawa Correctional Facility. The Xerox building was abandoned after the shooting, and was not used until 2004, when the producers of the television series Lost built a sound stage there to film indoor scenes.
In 1981, four people are killed and four are injured and a home and a workplace are burned. Honolulu police link the trail of fire and blood to a love triangle. Orlando Ganal, Sr. is so enraged that his estranged wife, Mabel, has a lover that he goes to her parent’s home, shoots them to death, then wounds his wife and son.
Ganal then fire bombed the home of Michael and Wendy Touchette because Michael’s brother is the lover. The fire kills the couple’s two young children and severely burned Michael and Wendy. Ganal threatened his wife with a gun the day before his spree. Threats to her lover, David Touchette, which started in May, drove David from Hawaii in July.
Ganal allegedly began his rampage on August 25, 1991, by fatally shooting his parents-in-law and also shooting and critically wounding Mabel and their 14-year-old son, Orlando Ganal, Jr.. From there he allegedly set fire to the Touchette home, reportedly because he thought David Touchette still lived there.
The fire killed 2-year-old Kalah and 10-month-old Joshua. Michael Touchette later died due to 80% of his body being burned. Police say Ganal concluded his rampage by setting fire to Young Laundry and Dry Cleaning, where he had worked for 15 years.
Ganal was indicted on a variety of charges including first-degree murder, first-degree terroristic threatening and possession, and use or threat to use a firearm in commission of a felony. He was being held on bail of more than $1 million.
Ganal was tried and convicted of murder in the first-degree, the most serious grade of murder in the state of Hawaii, reserved for the most heinous of killers. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Morgan’s Corner Murder was committed by two escaped convicts, James Majors, and John Palakiko in Nuuanu Valley on the outskirts of Honolulu. They escaped a prison work crew on March 10, 1948. James and John had intended to get supplies by burglarizing the victim’s neighbor.
They were hungry so when they smelled Therese Wilder’s cooking they decided to rob her instead. She was bound, gagged, and left unconscious in her bed. During the struggle Wilder suffered from a broken jaw, and she subsequently suffocated due to the broken jaw and gag placed around her neck and mouth.
Five days later, on March 16, Wilder’s gardener and maid found her body. On March 12, James and John attempted to steal a car, John was captured and James escaped. On March 21, James was caught attempting suicide by drinking iodine.
On April 16, they were charged with first-degree murder. James pleaded not guilty and John requested to postpone his plea. On June 18, the jury found the men guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced them to death by hanging.
On September 13, 1951, Governor Oren Long issued a stay of execution two minutes before the execution when attorneys presented evidence the men gave forced confessions. In 1954, Governor Samuel King commuted the men’s sentences from death to 90 years in prison.
On December 21, 1962, Governor John Burns commuted the men’s sentences to probation. John violated parole and was sent to prison for three years where he died on September 11, 1974 at age 46. On December 20, 1968, James completed parole. He was last known to be on Oahu in 1978 and disappeared likely by his own volition.
The case left many in Honolulu debating the merits of capital punishment in the state. The area, Morgan’s Corner, is now said to be the site of various hauntings, and urban legends.
The most famous criminal case in Hawaii. On September 12, 1931, Thalia Massie, a young navy wife, was found by passers-by two hours after leaving a party where she had been drinking heavily. Her face was bruised, mouth was bleeding, and her jaw was broken.
The case made national headlines. Newspapers pictured a territory unsafe for white women with subhuman native brutes on the prowl. In a separate traffic incident the same night, the police picked up five young local men.
The police repeatedly took them to Thalia’s hospital room until she finally identified them, alleging that they had abducted and raped her. The police never looked for anyone else. Grace Hubbard Fortescue was the mother of Thalia Massie and worked on getting justice for her daughter.
Grace arranged for the kidnapping and vicious beating of Horace Ida, one of the accused men. A second, Joseph Kahahawai, was forced into a car, shot and killed. Grace, along with several other accomplices, were charged with the murder.
Next Grace talked Thalia’s husband into kidnapping Kahahawai with the help of two Navy enlisted men. Massie and the two men attempted to beat a confession out of him ---- eventually one of the group of four shot him.
They eventually decided to dump Kahahawai’s body off Koko Head, at the time a desolate area away from urban Honolulu. Although he would eventually be found, it seemed to them why anyone would care.
They wrapped him in a sheet and put him in Grace’s rental car, pulling down the shades to hide the interior. A police motorcyclist, alerted to the kidnapping, saw the blinds and considered it suspicious. He pulled them over and immediately arrested all four for murder.
The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder. Under pressure from the Navy, Territorial Governor Lawrence M. Todd commuted the 10-year sentences of the convicted killers to one hour, to be served in his office.
Days later the entire group, including the Massies, the two other Navy men, Fortescue and Darrow, boarded the ship and left the island. Thalia and Massie divorced in 1934; she committed suicide in 1963; he died in 1987. Grace died in 1979, Albert Jones died in 1966, and Edward Lord died in 1967.
In 1966, while being interviewed by author Peter Van Slingerland, Albert O. Jones admitted that he was the one who shot Joseph Kahahawai.
These 5 cases of murder and mayhem are more unbelievable because they happened in a place of beauty and tranquility . A destination most people only dream of turned into a destination of death. We can only hope that theses 5 cases are the only cases to tarnish the paradise facade of Hawaii. ALOHA !
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