Police have finally arrested a suspect in a nearly 50-year-old cold case in which a Hawaii teenager was found dead at her high school.
Dawn Momohara was 16 years old when her body was found on the second floor of McKinley High School in Honolulu in 1977. For decades, detectives had failed to identify a suspect in the murder case but now, thanks to a breakthrough in DNA technology, they have arrested a former classmate, police confirmed.
The suspect, 66-year-old Gideon Castro, has been charged with second-degree murder and is currently in police custody.
Honolulu Police Department Lieutenant Deena Thoemmes said at a press conference on Tuesday that Castro was one of Momohara’s classmates and was arrested in his nursing home in Utah.
On March 21, 1977, Momohara was found at her high school partially clothed, with an orange cloth wrapped around her neck, police said.
Authorities confirmed she was strangled and had injuries consistent with sexual assault. The DNA of an unknown male was found on Momohara’s clothes, but police were unable to identify a suspect at the time.
“Let’s fast forward 42 years to March 20, 2019,” Thoemmes said. “The homicide cold case detective submitted a request to the HPD scientific identifications sections forensic biology unit to process several items of evidence that was recover recovered from the murder scene to include a blue shorts and an underwear that belonged to Dawn.”
In May 2020, the sample taken from Momohara’s shorts was matched with an unidentified male.
Three more years went by, but in September 2023, new information came to light that led police to identify Castro and his brother as possible suspects, Theoemmes said.
His brother was later ruled out as a suspect, but on further testing, Castro — who told authorities he’d met Momohara at a school dance but never dated her — was a match.
She credited the advance in DNA technology for the breakthrough in the case.
“Definitely it was the... increase in technology and DNA [and] what they’re able to do with the samples from 1977,” she told reporters.
The Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake arrested Castro on Tuesday morning, and he will be extradited to Honolulu.
