The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing. I'm Ali. And I'm Eli.
Welcome back everyone. We are on episode 91 this week. Would you like to just get right into it? Yeah, we are doing a cold case this week. Alright, let's do it. Today we are talking about the cold case of Gregory Yamada. And this takes place in September of 1986 in Waipahu, Hawaii. But first, a little bit about Gregory. Gregory is 21 years old in 1986. He lives in Pearl City with his mother and four sisters.
To be honest, I wasn't able to find a lot in my research about who Gregory was as a person. But his picture that I found is warm and inviting. He had a big smile that lit up his whole face. I truly wish I knew more about him to share with you all. But I hope that in talking about his story, those who knew him and loved him come forward with stories and just more information about who he is as a person. And now a timeline of events.
On Monday, September 8th, 1986, in the early morning hours around 1 10 a.m., a driver for the Oahu Sugar Company is in the process of doing his rounds. He's driving on a private road under the Waikili H1 Highway. The driver had passed by this area earlier around 11 p.m. and nothing was out of the ordinary. But this time at 1 10 a.m., he finds the bloodied body of a young man, jeans, a pullover shirt, and a sweatshirt that had been loosely tied around his neck.
His hands, however, had been bound along with his feet. He was also gagged. When police arrive on scene and start documenting the crime scene, they notice that while he is bloody, there are no visible wounds on his body. Police will need to wait for an autopsy in order to determine the cause of his death. Police get to work on trying to ID the victim. And by the next day, Tuesday, September 9th, police had positively IDed the man found beneath the overpass as Gregory Yamada.
When Gregory was found, at that point he had not been reported missing by anyone, and police had no solid leads as to who would want to kill this young man. Police at this point seem unsure of how he even got to where he was found. Gregory's autopsy does offer a few clues. The autopsy showed that he had died as a result of injuries, likely caused by a blow to his head. There were no drugs found in his system.
Police are trying to piece together where Gregory was on Sunday and what could have led him to being found early Monday morning, bound, gagged, and murdered. The next day, Wednesday, September 10th, desperate for leads, police set up a roadblock near where the body was found to stop vehicles on the highway. Police are trying to find someone who may have seen or noticed something, or if they saw any vehicles stopped along the road that night.
Police spend all day and into the night stopping vehicles in both directions to see if anyone has seen anything. Police finally call it off at around 1am. They don't get any new information about Gregory's murder from this. Police do say that they believe that Gregory was thrown off of the overpass to the Sugar Cane Road below. The fall from the highway overpass to the road below was right around 100 feet.
While Gregory died of head injuries, police refuse to comment on if they believe Gregory was alive when he was thrown from the road. Police don't have any suspects and they haven't been able to pin down a motive. The next week, on Tuesday, September 16th, services are held for Gregory and he is laid to rest. The case falls out of the media and it's not covered for years until police finally reach out to ask for the public's help.
They ask in December of 1991, so it's been over five years since Gregory's murder. A new task force was created to address the unsolved homicides in Hawaii and Gregory's case was one police were taking an active look at. The police ask the public for help IDing a man who was photographed using Gregory's bank card the day that he was found murdered. The card was used at a Honolulu Federal Saving and Loan Association ATM.
The suspect used the card at 6.13 p.m., 16 hours after Gregory was found murdered. Police don't say if the suspect withdrew money, but do confirm, quote, a transaction was completed, unquote, which means the killer likely had Gregory's pin. Police also reveal that Gregory ultimately died from the head injuries related to the fall, which leads me to believe that he was alive when he was thrown from the highway.
At this time in 1991, Detective Diaz believes that robbery was the motive in Gregory's murder. Police released several stills from the bank surveillance video, and for 1986, these pictures are very good. I think they show a lot of details of the man and someone out there should be able to recognize him. In 2021, more than 35 years since the murder, police released additional photos from the surveillance footage hoping that someone will come forward.
And to date, it does not appear that police have ever been able to ID the man who is using Gregory's bank card. But that is all we know about the murder of Gregory Yamada. If you know anything about the murder of Gregory Yamada in September of 1986, please call Crime Stoppers at 808-955-8300. So that is the cold case of Gregory Yamada. Something about this case that just hit me right in my heart was knowing that he had so many sisters. I'm one of a couple of sisters, as you know.
And I guess this is me kind of tooting my own horn, but I think when you have a lot of sisters, you usually end up being a pretty good brother. I know that because I also have two amazing brothers. Being raised alongside sisters, especially a lot of them, is very special. And I imagine that with his sisters, he probably had a very special and beautiful life, especially because of where they were living, why such a beautiful place.
Yeah, I really searched hard to try to find information about Gregory and just like who he was and what kind of relationship he had with the people around him. And unfortunately, I just couldn't find any stories about him. I looked through social media and newspaper reports and I just couldn't find anything. But you know, I think his picture is really telling as well. Like, he looks like such a welcoming and like warm person.
That when I saw his photo, that's actually like one of the reasons I started researching his case was because of his photo. Yeah, I think again, knowing that even just your description of him, it just echoes the heartbreak of what happened to him. And I mean more specifically in that his death, his murder rang to me as he was just disposed of, which I know is a terrible way to describe someone's death.
But because it was a murder, you know, like, I think gruesome descriptions are just naturally a part of it, which is so unfortunate. But that's like what happened to him. He was just disposed of. His murder was very violent. And police kind of believing that he was still alive when he was thrown off of the highway is horrifying to think of possibly being conscious, but like your hands are bound, like there's no breaking or there's nothing you can do.
And that that's really horrifying and scary, just really scary. My first question is about the driver, not that I think you know, he had any involvement. I was more just curious as to why he drove by a second time. Was he just doing routine deliveries in the same spot where he would pass it over and over again? Because you know, you said the first time he drove by and there was nothing there. And then shortly after, Gregory was spotted.
So from my understanding, the worker who found him, he was doing rounds. So at 11 p.m., he kind of drove past this area. And then about 1 10 a.m., I believe he drove past that same area again. And looking at the spot on Google Maps, the the road where Gregory was ultimately found kind of like leads up to what looks like a private facility, like it's a private road.
So yeah, it would only kind of be people who worked for the company that would have access unless you were throwing something off the overpass which went over the road. While we're talking about more specificity in location, I'm not really familiar with Hawaii at all. But I do know that it's broken up into islands. Could you expand on that just a little bit as to I know I've heard people say the big island but in full transparency, I don't know what that means.
Yeah, I'm just curious as just terrain wise. If this is an area of Hawaii that is frequented by tourists or if it is a mostly and primarily just a local spot in Hawaii where, you know, folks just live there. It's not a spot that people frequent while vacationing. Yes. So Waipahu is on the island of Honolulu, which is one of the smaller islands of Hawaii. Which kind of famously around Honolulu is like Pearl Harbor memorials. So that's like where we are in Hawaii, if you're familiar with that.
While Honolulu is in a tourist area and is visited by tourists, it seems like this particular part where he was found would be a little bit more residential. It was not like a tourist hotspot or anything. Thank you. That helps a lot. My curiosity around the specifics of the location kind of paves the way for me to speculate that this was a local person, perhaps even someone that knew him, especially knowing the information that maybe they had his ATM pin.
Yeah, someone who knows the area, who knows the terrain, who knows the rounds of someone driving a truck that would pass by over and over again in the same place. They know the time to drop a body or at least the the window of time where they could get away with something as horrific as this. So I know we try not to speculate too much on this podcast and more discuss the information and facts that we have at hand.
But I am curious as to what you think about the person who possibly committed this crime. I agree with you about it feels like a local person, like this person lived there year round and is maybe still living there. But one thing I did come across that I can't help but wonder, I realized that Gregory was not the first person that had been disposed of in this spot, kind of this exact spot actually.
Her name is Luis Medeiros and she was 25 years old and was found, from my understanding, very close in the same spot that Gregory was found. They also believe she was thrown from the overpass overhead. Her hands were bound behind her back. She was wearing her shirt, but the rest of her body was nude. When I heard about Luis's murder as well, which has never been solved, her murder is attributed to the Honolulu Strangler, who was an active serial killer during this time.
And I just can't help but see similarities between Gregory and Luis here. But Gregory has never been considered a victim of this serial killer because the rest of the victims are women. There was like a sexual assault component with all of their murders and that information doesn't seem to be the same for Gregory. But being bound, thrown off the overpass and in the same spot, to me that was just like a very odd coincidence happening.
I also think when you factor in that he was, or that his hoodie was around his neck, that it seemed that maybe there was some sort of strangulation element. You had the bindings, like there are definitely a couple of things there that, you know, if I was in that kind of job at the time and investigating, that I certainly would look into.
And I'm glad you brought up his sweater because I'm not sure if it is a strangulation thing or if it was just like a fashion moment of like the 1980s, you know, where you used to tie sweaters kind of like loosely around your shoulders and like neck. I'm not sure which one it is, honestly, but I thought it being around his neck was like an interesting fact.
I have also seen, I guess this is more in when someone is being arrested, but even with like a hoodie versus a sweater, I've seen the arms come out the bottom of the sweater where the, you know, the fabric of the arms of the sweater are hanging at the sides, but the person is arrested and they're cuffed.
So like that, it would make sense to me that maybe they told him to pull his arms out and that's when they were tied together, but the hoodie stayed on, almost like cloaked over the arms, if that, does that make sense? Yeah. And I truly don't know exactly how his sweater was found. They just said that it was like loosely tied around his neck. So I'm not sure if it was something that was done nefariously or something done for fashion. Moving more towards just the whys and how of everything.
Having this information about another murder in the same spot, honestly sends my mind like kind of spiraling in a bunch of different directions, but the manner in which they found him and the way he was disposed, like he knew something. And even if it was just, he knew the identity of the person who was maybe just robbing him still, that's usually why someone is, someone's life is ended in those scenarios. It's because they know something.
And I know it, we're still speculating that the person who used his bank card, we don't know who that person is, if he's the person who committed this crime. But if it is the same person, like you're really not doing that great of a job to make sure that no one sees who you are, but you ended someone's life and then showed your face on screen, not 24 hours later. So I don't know, I'm curious about the ATM card. I'm curious if maybe his card was just found afterwards and that's how it was used.
And it just looks really bad for this person. But I think that's my mind trying to make sense of something that's nonsensical to me, which is murder. But yeah, I'm interested to know more about what you think about that person, especially because the footage that they have captured of him is so clear.
Yeah, I do think the person that used the debit card did have some involvement because he did have the PIN number, so he had to have known Gregory on some level or have interacted with him enough to get his PIN number before getting away from him, whatever that would mean in this case. But the pictures are, or they seem to be stills from a video, but they are very clear. And we covered another case in Hawaii that was from 1991, I believe, and those photos were also shockingly clear.
So Hawaii really had great surveillance back in the day. I'm not sure, but these are very clear photos. And it's interesting to me that in 1991, almost five years after Gregory's murder, that was when the police released the first photo. And just because they are so clear, it's like if you had released this at the time, maybe somebody would have recognized it or recognized him, saw him the night before.
But when you release the photo five years later, somebody who just saw this person casually has forgotten it by now. So it was just a really lost opportunity. And then more recently in 2021, they released more. So it's like, why didn't you just release them all then? But yeah, the pictures will be up on our Instagram, so make sure you check those out, but they're very clear.
I am trying to make myself think or believe that the reason that information was withheld or not shared with the public was for a specific reason. Because I just, I can't understand why, other than they needed to keep it quiet. Because maybe they thought this person was on the run. Maybe they thought there's so many, there's so many things you can speculate as to why the job wasn't done. Unfortunately, all we're really left with is knowing that it wasn't.
While it is very unfortunate that that information was kept at bay, I was just, I was surprised each time you said that after years had passed, there was still momentum in Gregory's case down to 2021, which was 35, it's 35 years later. I think it's always a great sign when money is being invested into cases like this to bring peace to the families who need answers and I think a sense of peace to the communities of where these crimes happen.
I was happily surprised to hear that there was still a fire lit under this case. Definitely. I was really pleasantly surprised to see updates in 2021 and local news in Hawaii covering it as well. Those things matter in these cases, just keeping it alive and keeping pressure on police, all of those things matter. Yeah, really, really encouraging to see Gregory's case still getting attention, still being worked.
Hopefully that means that police do have a little bit more that we're just unaware of that they're developing and trying to get this case buttoned up and bring justice for Gregory and for his family. Yeah, it's just it's heinous what happened to him and somebody should have to answer for that. Well, it's 38 years later now today and we're still talking about Gregory.
So I think that even in a podcast setting for cases like this, it's really important to gain energy around this person around Gregory's name. And I'm hoping that this episode does exactly that and creates a ripple effect. And hopefully people start talking again. And I would be willing to bet that there is someone who still knows something out there about this case. Someone has spoken about this crime since then. I believe that in my bones.
So I'm really hoping that our listeners start talking about him too. Yeah, and someone can recognize the person in this ATM footage to somebody knows who this is. Somebody would see this and recognize it even all these years later. It's that clear of photos. Like I said, those will be on our Instagram. Again, if you know anything about the murder of Gregory Yamada in September of 1986, please call Crime Stoppers at 808-955-8300.
While you're listening to us in your podcast app, if you haven't yet, please rate and review us. And like I mentioned a few times already, we'll have those pictures from the ATM footage up on our Instagram, as well as the photo of Gregory that really spoke to me. So those will all be up there. You can find us at cold and missing will pop right up. If you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can follow along with the podcast with our transcripts.
All of those can be found at www.coldandmissing.com. And that's another place you can review us. We had somebody review us on our website this week. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. So if you don't have Apple podcasts, but you really want to leave a written review, go ahead and do it that way. And thank you to everyone who's reached out via email. It's always so fun to read your emails and just hear what you have to say. So thanks so much for writing to us.
But that is all I have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to cold and missing. I'm your host, Ali. And I'm your cohost, Eli. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all. Stay safe, y'all.