Police have arrested a suspect within the unsolved homicide of a Honolulu youngster, whose dying rocked the highschool the place her frame was once came upon virtually 5 many years in the past. They stated the person arrested, Gideon Castro, was once one in all her former schoolmates who joined the U.S. Military Reserve after graduating.
Break of day Momohara was once discovered useless the morning of March 21, 1977, on the second one flooring of a development at McKinley Top College, in Hawaii’s capital, consistent with the Honolulu Police Division. She was once 16 and a scholar there in her sophomore 12 months.
Officials on the time confirmed as much as a grotesque scene. Momohara was once in part clothed and mendacity on her again with an orange material tied round her neck, said Lt. Deena Thoemmes, of Honolulu Police, at a Tuesday information convention. A next post-mortem dominated Momohara was once strangled to dying, and the scientific examiner stated there have been indicators of sexual attack.
Even though police retrieved an unknown guy’s DNA pattern from {the teenager}’s clothes, they might no longer establish a suspect. Government would no longer increase significant leads within the murder till 2020, after a chilly case detective re-submitted proof for forensic tests the use of up to date generation.
Honolulu Police Division
Via September 2023, the DNA checks led investigators to 2 imaginable suspects: brothers Gideon Castro and William Castro, who had each been interviewed within the rapid aftermath of Momohara’s killing. Again then, Gideon Castro informed police he met Momohara at a faculty dance in 1976, simply prior to he graduated, police stated. William Castro in the ones interviews stated he and Momohara periodically talked at the telephone however denied ever being in any roughly courting along with her.
As soon as forensic checks narrowed down the pool of doable suspects to the Castro brothers, Thoemmes stated police traveled to Chicago, the place William Castro lived, to acquire a DNA pattern secretly from one in all his youngsters and use it as a comparability. The comparability excluded William Castro as a suspect, and Gideon Castro, now 66, was once arrested at his nursing house in Utah on a second-degree homicide price.
Gideon Castro will probably be extradited again to Honolulu, Thoemmes stated.
“On behalf of the Honolulu Police Division, I need to thank all of the people and businesses that made lately’s arrest imaginable,” the lieutenant stated. “Thanks for all of your determination and dedication to the tireless purusit of justice for Break of day and the Momohara circle of relatives.”
