Honolulu prosecutors will charge a 61-year-old Florida suspect in the September 1982 beating and strangulation death of Kathy Hicks, a 25-year-old Delta Air Lines employee, who was on a visit to Honolulu from Atlanta.

The recent break in the 38-year-old cold case came after a DNA comparison tied Thomas Garner to both Hicks’ slaying and a similar killing of another 25-year-old woman, Pamela Cahanes, a U.S. naval recruit, two years later in Florida.

Honolulu Police Department detectives said Friday that they conferred with prosecutors, who have accepted the second-degree murder case, although Garner has not yet been charged since he is not yet in HPD custody.

Garner, a dental hygienist, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison May 6 for the 1984 beating and strangling of Cahanes, whose body was dumped in an overgrown field in Central Florida, two days after she graduated from boot camp at the Orlando Naval Training Center.

Hicks was killed sometime between 11 p.m. Sept. 18, 1982, and 10 a.m. the next day, police said Friday in an HPD bulletin.

Garner had been stationed in Hawaii from April 1980 until October 1982, a month after Hicks was killed, according to The Associated Press.

“The initial investigation by HPD homicide detectives was extensive but did not result in viable leads,” police said.

In 1982, Hicks’ slaying stumped Honolulu detectives, who were asking for the public’s help in finding her killer, who may have been a man named Tony, The Honolulu Advertiser said. He was described as in his mid-20s, 6 feet tall, weighing 150 to 160 pounds, with brown eyes and short black hair.

According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Hicks, a reservations clerk in Atlanta, had come to play in a softball tournament sponsored by United Airlines. She had played softball at Kapiolani Park the day before her body was found.

Hicks was found slain along Nuuanu Pali Drive, apparently beaten. An autopsy revealed she was choked to death after being punched several times, the medical examiner said.

Two joggers found her fully clothed body in the brush down an embankment in the area of the Board of Water Supply’s pumping station park.

Prior to the discovery of her body, Hicks was seen at the Ilikai Hotel, the two Honolulu dailies reported.

Police described her as Black, with a short, Afro hairstyle, 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighing 132 pounds, and wearing a purple blouse with a bare midriff, beige slacks, gold earrings and chain necklaces.

The Advertiser said police wanted to interview her hotel roommate, another Delta employee, about a date Hicks had Saturday with a man she met here, but the roommate left for the mainland.

Two years after Hicks was killed, Cahanes’ body was found Aug. 5, 1984, naked except for a pair of white underwear. The case was reopened in the 1990s, and that’s when semen was found on the underwear.

Investigators developed a DNA profile of the suspect, and by 2018 technology had advanced to where they could build a “family tree” from that profile using a genealogy database, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

In February 2019 an investigator doing surveillance on Garner saw him throwing out a bag of garbage at his Jacksonville home.

DNA collected from a cigarette butt, a cotton swab and some used dental floss found in the bag matched the semen found on Cahanes’ underwear, court records showed.

A search warrant filed to obtain Garner’s DNA revealed Hicks had told friends she was at a bar near Hickam Air Force Base. Investigators made a preliminary match of DNA found on her underwear to Garner.

HPD said that in May 2021 a suspect was identified via DNA comparison. An AP report said that happened in April.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.