The word 'strangler' is correct and commonly used in written English.
It refers to someone or something that kills another person or animal by squeezing their neck or throat, cutting off their air supply. Example: The newspaper reported that a notorious strangler had been apprehended by the police after a string of murders in the city.
We even have a serial killer nicknamed after our area – Kenneth Erskine, the "Stockwell strangler", convicted of killing seven women, and suspected of having killed a further four.
In this group are strangler figs (Ficus), which begin life as epiphytes, growing from seeds left on high tree branches by birds or fruit bats.
In some species of Ficus, including the strangler figs, birds and bats drop fig seeds onto the branches of other trees.
Lianas tie trees to one another, parasitic species cling to trunks and branches, and strangler figs (Ficus pretoriae) put down aerial taproots.
Hardwood hammocks consist of thick stands of tropical (mahogany, cocoplum, and strangler fig) and temperate (saw palmetto, live oak, and red maple) trees growing on slight hills, creating islands in the saw-grass marsh and sloughs; domes of cypress or willow can also be found.
But further in we find the postcard scene: kapok trees growing antler-like from temple walls, strangler figs winding in and out of brickwork like mortar-eating snakes.
My father was what they called a "bundle strangler" – or a dispatch hand – with the 'Daily Record' in Glasgow; my mother was a housewife.
Every strangler, rapist and child-killer given a solid hearing, room for a second chance, regular visiting sessions and the chance to bat things higher when things don't go their way?
The surrounding area was teeming with temples: temples with Shiva Linga (vast phallic symbols) in them, like Prasat Thneng and Prasat Leung, and others (like Prasat Neang Khmau) in which the gnarled tree-roots and strangler figs laced, like a lattice-work, over them, looked as old as the stones.
While the Suffolk strangler was on the rampage, Littlejohn described Steve Wright's victims as "no great loss".
Vying for attention were arenga palms, strangler figs and elegant Tahitian chestnuts, which have distinctive buttress roots like great struts rising from the forest floor.
