Gayle Hook

In the early 1970s, a young woman from Washington State, described by her sister as beautiful and charming, sought a temporary life in paradise on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Gayle Hook, a 21-year-old female, had moved from her native Seattle with a friend about nine months before her death. She was a free-spirited and happy person, very social and known for being nice to everyone. She embraced the island lifestyle, loved the beach, and settled in the Kealakekua area of South Kona. Without a vehicle of her own, she was known to hitchhike, a common practice at the time.

On March 29, 1973, Gayle told her roommates she was heading to the beach and left her residence. It was the last time she was seen alive. Her roommates didn't report her missing right away, as she had previously talked about wanting to visit the scenic Waipiʻo Valley and they assumed she might have gone. The call that would shatter her family's world came on her mother's birthday. Her younger sister, Marilyn, later recalled the news "just absolutely destroyed" their mother and changed their lives completely.

A week after she vanished, on April 6, 1973, a group of high school students exploring the grounds of the then-abandoned Kahikolu Trinity Church in Nāpoʻopoʻo discovered her partially decomposed body. She was found in a back room of a pavilion on the historic church property, about three-quarters of a mile from the beach she loved. An autopsy determined that Gayle had been dead for about a week and died from a single, close-range gunshot wound to her left eye, likely from a high-powered rifle. Her sister also stated that she had been badly beaten and raped. Police believed the murder happened elsewhere and that her body was left at the church pavilion.

The Hawaiʻi Police Department launched a homicide investigation, interviewing more than 100 people in the initial days. Detectives from the Captain Cook station pursued leads, but the case grew cold. The state of the body when found presented immediate challenges for investigators, and no bullet was recovered from the scene. Over the decades, police have identified several persons of interest, but no suspect has ever been publicly named or charged in connection with the murder.

In September 2013, on the 40th anniversary of the crime, Hawaiʻi Island police announced they were re-evaluating the cold case, hoping to apply new technologies to the evidence collected in 1973. In a 2022 news report, Detective Carrie Akina confirmed that evidence from the scene would be retested using modern DNA technology. The hope was that these advances could finally provide a breakthrough.

For decades, Gayle's family has lived with the pain and uncertainty of her unsolved murder. "I was very angry for a few years," her sister Marilyn shared in an interview. "Very, very angry. And now I'm just sad." She spoke of the life her sister never had: "Gayle didn't deserve this. She was a 21-year-old girl just starting out in life... She never had the opportunity to have children, to get married, to travel any farther." As of 2022, Gayle's father was 96 years old, still hoping for answers.

As of an August 2024 update from the Hawaiʻi Police Department, Gayle Hook's murder remains unsolved. Detectives continue to seek information that could lead to a resolution for her surviving family. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Hawaiʻi Police Department's Unsolved Homicides Division at (808) 961-2326 or to email [email protected]. Tipsters who wish to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at (808) 961-8300.