Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 5

Wednesday, May 14, 1986 Honolulw Star-Byllin A-3 5 Women Slain: a Macabre Landmark for Honolulu's ently been rolled down the mud embankment. She was strangled and her hands were tied behind her back, Hughes' relatives and friends have gathered $7,000 in reward money for information leading to the conviction of her murderer. The third victim, Louise Medeiros, was a 25-year-old unemployed Waipahu woman. Medeiros boarded a plane the night of Wednesday, March 26, on Kauai to fly home to Oahu. The brown-haired woman told her family she would catch a bus from the airport to the Waipahu apartment she shared with her boyfriend.

Medeiros. a single mother who was three months pregnant, had gone to Kauai for the reading of her mother's will. A week later, on April 2, a road-paving crew spotted her body below a Waipahu freeway overpass near Waikele Stream. She was wearing only the same red-and-white flowered blouse that she had on when she got on the plane. Her body was found with her hands tied behind her back.

Police have not disclosed the cause of death. PESCE WORKED as a sales representative for McCaw Telep-age in Kakaako. Pesce left her working place at about 6:30 p.m. on April 29, a Tuesday. The brown-haired woman was wearing a light-bhie dress with turtleneck and a low waist with two pockets on the sides.

Pesce also had on white strapless high-heeled shoes and a white cotton jacket. Her roommate reported her missing Wednesday morning and police found her car Wednesday afternoon parked at the Nimltz Highway viaduct leading to the H-l Freeway near the airport. Witnesses later said they saw the car parked there with its emergency flashers on at about 7 p.m. Four days after she was last seen, some people looking for their friends who had gone squid-fishing at Sand Island found Pesce's nude body. When her body was found, her hands were tied behind her back.

Police have not released the cause of death. By Robbie Dingeman Star-Bulletin Writer On a Wednesday night last May, Vickl Gail Purdy put on a yellow iumpsuit and left her Mllllanl home at about 8 p.m. to go nightclubblng in Walklkl. Early the next morning police Eulled her body out of Keehl agoon. Nearly a year later, Honolulu police still seek her killer along with whoever is responsible for the deaths of four other Island women, The slayings mark a macabre landmark for Hawaii since they appear to be the work of the state's first "serial killer." The bodies of all five Caucasian women were found in or' near water.

Each died or disappeared on a weekday. At least three of the women were strangled and at least three were found with their hands tied behind their back. Police have not released the cause of death In the two most recent cases. Detectives also refuse to say if the killings share a trademark that would Indicate a closer link to one killer. A SPECIAL 27-member police task force, formed in early February, works long shifts each day trying to solve the five murders.

The task force arrested and booked a 43-year-old Ewa Beach man on Friday In connection with the murder of Linda Pesce, and then released him without charges some 10 hours later. Police MaJ. Chester Hughes urges anyone who believes they may have a clue to the murders to call police. Hughes said he's especially Interested in hearing from anyone who witnessed anything suspicious along Nlmltz Highway where Pesce's car was found; or at Sand Island where her body was discovered four days later. Pesce's killing was the most recent.

Detectives investigating the murders emphasize that there mav be more than one killer at work. They have established that some of the killings are linked. Armed with an FBI profile of the suspect Caucasian man in his 30s or 40s with no criminal record, possibly experiencing marital or girlfriend problems, commits crimes in area he's. VILLAGE PARK A SPECIAL familiar with police continue to search. Honolulu detectives have received help from both the local and national offices of the FBI.

They have also consulted with Seattle's Green River Task Force, which is investigating the nation's longest unsolved string of serial killings. THE FIRST AND the last killings In the Hawaii "series," Purdy's and Pesce's, differ from the others in a few points in cluding: Bus link. The other three victims rode buses and were last seen at or near bus stops. Both Pesce and Purdy drove their own cars. Time frame.

Purdy died in May, more than six months before the next killing. Since then the murders have occurred about once a month. Location. Each killing has some link to Central Oahu, the airport area or Walpahu. Al- though Purdy's body was found In the targeted area, she lived in Mililanl, worked in Wahiawa and was last seen In Waikikl.

Age. Pesce, 36, was more than 10 years older than the other victims. Among the murder victims was Purdy, 25, who lived on Kuahelanl Avenue with her husband, a warrant officer stationed at Schofield Barracks. Purdy was a housewife who also worked In a video store ad-Joining the Wahiawa Adult Book Store. MORE THAN six months after Purdy died, two women who worked in the same video store were stabbed to death.

The bodies of bookstore owner Carol Drake, 56, and clerk Terry Lee Foxx, 39, were discovered in the Wilikina Drive store on Dec. 18. Their murders also remain unsolved. Purdy's husband, Gary K. Purdy, has since been transferred out of state.

When police found his wife's body, she was still clad in the bright Jumpsuit and wearing jewelry The Medical Examiner's Office tenced to death by' a Florida 6 ury in 187. He currently is on eath Row at Florida state Prison. RICHARD MACEK: Dubbed the "Mad Biter" for the telltale mark he left on his victims, he Is serving 200 to 400 years in a Wisconsin prison for two murders and is suspected of at least six more. EDMUND KEMPER III: of Santa Cruz, California, killed six young women hitchhikers In the Northern California area plus his mother, whom he beheaded when he was 24, and his grandparents, whom he shot to death when he was 15. NIGHT STALKER: Richard Ramirez, currently on trial in Los Angeles, a 26year-old drifter from El Paso, Texas, accused of killing 20 people and raping in BODIES FOUND Numbers show locations where bodies of five women were found.

Star-Bulletin Maps by Ray Higuchi. Murder, Mayhem Down Through the Years: a Gallery of Killers Hawaii S5f MW'V Gacy Ramirez SKID ROW STABBER: Bobbv Joe Maxwell was convicted of two of the 10 ritualistic murders he was believed to have committed to "put souls out of their misery" in the Los Angeles Skid Row area. The murders occurred in 1978 and 1979. Maxwell was sentenced to life in prison in 1984. GREEN RIVER KILLER (WASHINGTON): He is believed to have killed more than 34 young women, many of them prostitutes, since 1982.

The Honolulu task force was in contact with the Green River Task Force early in the Hawaii case. It is unknown whether police think one person is responsible for killings in both states. Bundy insisted on defending his own case and his bizarre courtroom performance strengthened the case against him, Keppel said. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. reportedly attempted to negotiate for a reduced sentence after he read that Gacy killed 33 people, six more than him.

"My record is 27, but if you cut me some slack on the time I can find you more bodies and get my record back," he told authorities. The Violence Trigger What triggers the violence? "It can be anything that Increases stress and tension," Lind said, "problems with a girlfriend or wife that come to a head, financial difficulties." Martha Torney, a criminologist for the state's Planning Division of the Department of Corrections, said one Oahu man began raping women after he lost an expected promotion to a man 10 years younger. "He had no criminal or mental history," she said. "But he took his anger and frustration out on people less powerful than him: women." How can people prevent becoming a victim of a serial killer? "There's no tried and true way," Keppel said. "If the killer is killing prostitutes and you're a prostitute, that activity should be stopped.

If he's killing hitchhikers, then stop hitchhiking. Other than the obvious, people Just must be careful until, or If, he is caught." A REPORT concluded that she was strangled. Reglna Sakamoto was killed in mid-January. The 17-year-old senior at Leile-hua High School with dark-blonde hair, Sakamoto was last seen at a telephone booth near a bus stop near her home. A W'aipahu girl, she caught the bus daily from her home on Awanel Street to the Wahiawa school.

On Jan. 14. the day she disappeared, she telephoned her boyfriend to say that she had missed the bus and would be late for school. Passersby said they saw her at the bus stop. SAKAMOTO did not show up for class that day and her family reported her missing when she didn't return home that night.

The next day, a fisherman found her partially clothed body floating in Keehi Lagoon near the dlamondhead end of the airport's reef runway. When she was found, she was wearing only a white sweatshirt with "Hawaiian Island Creations" printed on the sleeves over a blue, short-sleeved T-shirt, pearl-stud earrings and a white watch. She had been raped and strangled. Denise Hughes was 21, a secretary who lived at a Kamehame-ha Highway home in Pearl City while her Navy husband was stationed aboard a ship at Pearl Harbor. On the Wednesday night of Jan.

29, she and her husband had dinner aboard his ship, then she left at about 10 p.m. An hour later he called and confirmed that she reached home safely. At noon the next day. Hughes' boss at Long Distance USA called her husband to ask why she didn't report to work. Her husband said she commuted to work daily by bus from a stop near Leeward Community College.

ON SATURDAY, three youths crabbing in a drainage canal in Mapunapuna's Moanalua Stream found her body. Clad In an azure-blue dress, the body was wrapped In a blue plastic tarpaulin and had appar several In the Los Angeles area last summer. Authorities said he told them he enjoyed watching the victims die. WAYNE WILLIAMS: Convicted of murdering two black youths during the wave of Atlanta child murders in 1980. HENRY LEE LUCAS: A drifter, perhaps the most prolific murderer in U.S.

history, confessed to killing 360 people nationwide. He has been convicted 10, and is awaiting execution for the 1979 slaying of an unidentified female hitchhiker near Georgetown. HILLSIDE STRANGLER: Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were convicted of the sex-slayings of 10 young women who were kidnapped, raped and killed. Their bodies were. strewn ing is the orgasm, in lieu of being able to ejaculate, he said.

While the idea is penetration, the killers most often are only able to put a knife or bullet Into a woman, Lunde said. Strategic to the fantasy is the killer's need to overpower a woman, something he has been unable to do in reality, Lind said. So why doesn't he pay a prostitute for sex? "Because terrorizing a woman, taking away her control of the situation, is part of the fantasy," Lind said. "Having to pay would diminish the fantasy purpose." Serial killers cannot distinguish between objects and people, according to Morrison, the psychiatrist who studied Gacy, convicted of the murders of 23 boys and young men over seven years. Gacy buried most of his victims In the crawl space of his house and then joked to police after his arrest that "The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral home without a license." The lack of conscience also seems true in the Bundy case.

He told police he was surprised the local papers wrote about the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl Bundy had killed because "It wasn't such an important thing." Richard Macek, dubbed the "Mad Biter" for the telltale mark he left on some victims, told police he didn't have "any remorse for what I did." By Tim Ryan StarBulletin Writer JACK THE RIPPER: Never caught, and perhaps the first serial killer, he mutilated at least six women, mostly prostitutes, in Victorian England. JOHN WAYNE GACY Of Chicago, implicated in the murders of 33 young men over a seven-year period. He buried most of them in his basement. THEODORE BUNDY: He is implicated in the murders and sexual mutilations of 40 young women in Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida between 1974 and 1978. Bundy was sen- More Coverage on Page 6-7 Serial Killers 'Usually Blend In Too Well' with Society 11,1 11 Bundy Buono across Los Angeles area hillsides between October 1977 and February 1978.

TRASH BAG KILLER: Patrick W. Kearney was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for the sex slayings of three men in Riverside County in California and was given a second life sentence in Los Angeles for 18 other killings. He was suspected of killing up to 28 young men. Most of the victims who were found had been dismembered, their bodies stuffed in trash bags and dumped along highways. SUNSET STRIP KILLER: Douglas Daniel Clark was convicted of the 1980 sex-thrill murders of Macek is serving 200 to 400 years in a Wisconsin prison for two murders and is suspected in six more.

Difficult Capture Making capture very difficult is the killers' ability to act sane. Kemper was considered a model inmate at the mental hospital where he spent five years after murdering his grandparents and he is flourishing now at Vacaville, Lunde said. By adulthood most serial killers have perfected the mask of being sane. They are likely to be charming, intelligent, better-than-average-Iooking and glib, Lunde said. Gacy, for instance, performed as a clown to entertain children in hospitals.

So how are they caught? "Often by accident," Keppel said. "There may have been something suspicious in the Bundy case (leading to his arrest) but those that occurred in the middle produce almost no evidence." To make matters worse, the killers are likely to be fascinated by police work, knowing how investigations are conducted. Bundy, for instance, once worked for the King County Crime Commission, Keppel said. Wavne Williams, convicted of murdering two black youths during the Atlanta child murders in 1980, often photographed crime scenes. Gacy had a police radio in his home.

And Lucas Bianchi six young women, mostly runaways and prostitutes from the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. He was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to death. He severed the heads of some of his victims and kept them in a freezer. FREEWAY KILLER: William G. Bonin preyed on hitchhikers.

He was convicted of the sex killings of 12 young men and boys in Los Angeles County between August 1979 and June 1980. Bonin also was convicted of the murders of four young men in Orange County. He was sentenced to death in both cases. He was arrested by police in Hollywood as he was about to sodomize a young man in the back of his van, authorities said. Kemper frequented bars where police hung out and teased them about not catching the killer.

"They enjoy outwitting police and reading about it," Lunde said. Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler linked to five murders in Los Angeles was arrested for strangling two women in Bellingham, more than a year after the last in a series of Southern California murders. According to newspaper reports, local police, noting Bianchi's California driver's license, called Los Angeles for a routine background check. A member of the sheriff's department who had worked on the Strangler case just happened to get the call and noticed similarities. Berkowitz was caught because of a parking ticket.

Bundy was stopped for a traffic violation. And Henry Lucas, who has confessed to 188 murders in 24 states, was arrested on a weapons charge, then confessed. But In some instances, the killers want to be caught, Lind said. "They are living very strange lives," she said. "Maintaining a dual personality the sane one and the killing one Is extremely difficult to keep up," And, adds Lunde, the killer sometimes becomes tired of anonymity.

"He wants the fame that this unknown person is receiving in the media," he said. Gacy kept a scrapbook about his case, police reported. Continued from Page One him bordering on incest." Ultimately, Kemper, who stands 6 feet 8 and weighs 270 pounds, confessed to police only after killing his last victim, his mother, by stabbing her repeatedly, cutting off her. head, propping it on a hatbox and using it as a dartboard. Furthermore, most serial killers have a history of what is called "classic anxiety symptoms," Lunde said.

These include stuttering, bed wetting, mild defiance in school and shoplifting. Later, the anger often escalates to such violent acts as setting fires, or torturing animals. Berkowitz killed his mother's parakeet; Kemper, his mother's-cats, skinning them, then hanging them on the front porch. In puberty, sexual confusion and curiosity is introduced with their aggression. Kemper told authorities that as a youth he frequently read detective magazines looking for pictures of corpses.

He later watched "snuff" movies, pornographic films where the-woman is killed, or simulated to be killed during, or after, sexual intercourse. "It didn't make me mean, it just fueled the fire," Lunde said Kemper told him. Lunde said for men like Kemper, who was "seriously sexually repressed," sexual stimulation is achieved only by exerting power over somebody. That's why most attacks are on women, children, the elderly or homosexuals, he said. Kemper, who Is imprisoned at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, told Lunde that inducing these feelings of terror "made me somebody." "I was making life and death decisions playing God In their he said.

Serial killers act out their fantasy sex lives through murder, which indicates the killers' "deep-seated hostility toward women, a long history of problems with their mothers and other female relationships," Lind said. Berkowitz discovered that his natural mother, who had given him up for adoption as a baby, had kept a daughter. He then began killing women in Queens, New York, where the half-sister lived. "Slasher' Movie Effect Citing the numerous "slasher" movies that show women being mutilated or victimized bv other acts of violence by men, Lind believes that society provides some sort of support for these acts. "They see it on the screen and it gives it credibility," she said.

"They act out a fantasy which they believe will have a predetermined conclusion." But it rarely does because the woman doesn't cooperate or the man cannot complete the sexual act, Lind said. "So thev do it again, hoping it will be different, or until they get caught," she said. The selection and stalking of the victim are, in essence, fore-play, Lunde said. And the kill I.