Susie Chun Oakland was in the second year when she arrived at McKinley high school in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States – a crime scene – that Monday morning almost half a century.
One of his teachers had just found another student’s body on the second floor of the English building, told CNN Susie. Dawn Momohara, 16, was partially dressed, with a well -wrapped orange cloth around his neck, police said. It seemed to have been a victim of sexual abuse and strangled.
In a very united community in Hawaii’s most populous capital and city, the nerves fell into the skin long after the discovery of Dawn’s body on March 21, 1977.
“It was our first experience with a crime like that. It was very sad that someone had died that way, ”said Susie, coordinator of the program of an Oahu elderly center that offers services to Kupuna, the Hawaiian term for the elderly. “People were afraid. In our state, we take care of each other. We grew up looking at each other. ”
Still, they would spend decades until the authorities appointed a suspect of the adolescent’s murder.
On Tuesday, January 21, Gideon Castro, 66, a McKinley secondary graduate who previously told police that he knew the victim, was detained at Utah’s elderly home where he lived, the lieutenant announced at a press conference at a press conference Deena Thoemmes of the Honolulu Police.
Castro was accused of second degree homicide after DNA tests that were not available in the 1970s helped identify him almost 50 years later, Thoemmes said.
“I am happy for Dawn’s family because this case has been resolved,” said Susie, with mixed feelings. “I am sad that there are so many other cases that were not resolved. It is a mixture of emotions. But I am happy to have people and professionals, as well as the community, who have not given up. ”
Countless clues
Dawn’s mother had news of her daughter for the last time just before she was found dead. The teenager received a call from an unknown man on Sunday morning and later told her mother she was going to a shopping center with friends, according to Thoemmes.
When Dawn did not return home tonight, friends and family traveled the school campus looking for him, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin said at the time. It was not clear if the teenager – described by his colleagues like Quieta and Shy – managed to reach the shopping center. Dawn was given as missing hours before his body was found outside a classroom.
In the days of Dawn’s death, Thoemmes said, the detectives interviewed friends, family and acquaintances. Police released sketches of a man and a car that two witnesses described that they saw near the English school building the night before his death.
Sketch of a “person of interest” in the murder of Dawn Momohara released by the Honolulu police in 1977. Honolulu police
Gideon Castro and his brother were among the schoolmates that the detectives interviewed during the early stages of the investigation, Thoemmes said.
At the time, Castro told police that he had met Dawn at a school ball in 1976, the year he graduated. He said he had last seen her at a fair the following year, when they talked for about 15 minutes and he told him that he was in the US Army reserve, according to Thoemmes.
“Although they followed numerous clues and interviewed several people, the investigators could not identify a suspect at that time,” he recalled.
The case was filed for decades
Lieutenant Deena Thoemmes of Honolulu police announces a detention for Dawn Momohara’s murder at a press conference on January 21. Honolulu Police
Only 42 years later, in 2019, archived case detectives – assisted by modern DNA tests – began to make progress in the investigation after evidence analysis of Dawn’s shorts and underwear.
Investigators managed in 2020 to obtain the partial main DNA profile of an unidentified man from the sample obtained from the shorts.
In 2023, investigators received information that Castro or his brother could be “potential suspects” in this case, Thoemmes revealed, without detailing. The detectives learned where the brothers were living and traveled to the continent to secretly obtain DNA samples from the Castro children.
A DNA profile obtained from one of his brother’s children innocently, Thoemmes said, and attention turned to Gideon Castro.
The collected sample of Gideon Castro’s son showed that the father was compatible with the DNA found in Dawn’s shorts.
In early January, the detectives went to Utah and discreetly obtained a Gideon Castro DNA sample – which the tests showed corresponding to the DNA profile taken from the shorts, Thoemmes said. It was arrested at 7:40 am on January 21 in a home of elderly.
Susie Chun Oakland learned of Castro’s arrest by employees and members of the elderly center where she works. He regretted that Dawn has not had the opportunity to be a wise and loving kupuna for younger generations.
“It is just about taking care of each other. This should guide us in our lives and the way we live it, ”Susie said while helping an elderly man preparing for an appointment. “I don’t know the family (from Dawn), but I hope that at least for her relatives there is an outcome.”
