This Was The First Victim Of The Honolulu Strangler

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

The following morning, Vicki's body was found in an embankment overlooking a lagoon. Her hands had been bound behind her back and she'd been strangled, and raped. It would be almost six months before the murderer would strike again, this time raping, strangling, and killing another local โ€” a 17-year-old girl named Regina Sakamoto, according to Listverse.

The two victims shared some superficial physical characteristics like being petite but it was the similar manner of death that first tipped authorities to the idea that they could have a serial killer at work in Honolulu. Three more victims soon followed but it wasn't until an informant, Howard Gay, came forward to alert police to the location of another body, something he'd been told, he claimed, by a psychic (per The True Crime Database).

When victim Linda Pesce's body was indeed found in the area Gay had told police about, he immediately became a leading suspect. However, despite circumstantial evidence โ€” possible eyewitness sightings of Gay with a victim and his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend coming forward to say that he liked to have sex with women while their hands were tied behind their backs โ€” Gay was never arrested or charged with any crimes. Gay eventually left Hawaii to return to the mainland and while the killings did stop, a true link between those two occurrences has never been proven.

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