A classmate of a teenage girl found sexually assaulted and strangled in her Hawaii high school has been arrested nearly 50 years later in a Utah nursing home, according to cops.
Sophomore Dawn Momohara, 16, was found on the second floor of Honolulu’s McKinley High School in March 1977 with an orange cloth tied around her neck, according to NBC News.
She was “lying on her back, partially clothed. It appeared that she had been sexually assaulted and she was pronounced dead at the scene,” homicide lieutenant Deena Thoemmes said.
The case ran cold for decades — until late Tuesday when one of her former classmates, Gideon Castro, now 66, was arrested in a nursing home in Utah, police said.
He was charged with second-degree murder, Thoemmes said, crediting the advancements in DNA.
Castro and his brother William were both interviewed days after Momohara’s body was found — but a prime suspect was never publicly identified, even as police for years advertised a sketch of a suspect and a Pontiac Lemans seen near the Honolulu high school the night Momohara was murdered.
The case went cold until 2019, when detectives decided to test several items recovered from the murder scene — including underwear and a pair of blue shorts — for DNA.
That enabled them to make a DNA profile of the suspect the following year — which was matched to Castro earlier this month, thanks to help from the FBI and Homeland Security, the police department said.
Castro was living in a Salt Lake City-area nursing home and is awaiting extradition to Honolulu, Thoemmes said.
In announcing the arrest, Thoemmes praised everyone involved for their “tireless pursuit of justice for Dawn and the Momohara family.”