50 Years Later, Suspect Arrested In Hawaii Murder Of Teenage Girl

Nancy Anderson was in her late teens when she moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, back in the fall of 1971. The young girl had graduated from high school in Michigan a couple of years earlier, and she wanted to experience life on the island before going off to college, reported the Honolulu Star Advertiser. While in Waikiki, she worked at McDonald’s to support herself.

On the afternoon of Jan. 7, 1972, Anderson’s roommate Jody Spooner came home to find Anderson inside their shared apartment with two knife salesmen. Shortly after, she went to her room to take a nap.

When Spooner got up from her nap that afternoon, she noticed Anderson’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. When she pushed it open, she saw Anderson laying bloody and dead on the floor, according to FOX 13. She had been stabbed 63 times, and it was determined that a knife wound to the heart was the fatal injury.

Spooner did not know when her roommate was slain, though she told police she thought she had heard a scream around 4:15 p.m., about an hour before she found Anderson dead, FOX 13 reported.

Police thoroughly investigated the brutal killing. However, it eventually went cold. The grisly murder remained unsolved for five decades, until police received a tip about the case in December of 2021, according to NBC News.

Then, on Sept. 14, 2022, an arrest was finally made in the case thanks in part to DNA technology. Tudor Chirila Jr., 77, of Reno, Nevada, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, PEOPLE reported.

Chirila is an attorney who was living in Honolulu in the early 1970s. He worked at the University of Hawaii which was near Anderson’s apartment at the time of the murder. He had given a DNA sample to police earlier in September, then survived a suicide attempt less than a week before he was charged with the murder.

On Sept. 16, 2022, a Nevada judge ordered Chirila to remain in jail without bail until his arraignment on charges of being a fugitive from another state.