19-Year-Old Nancy Anderson Was Murdered in Her Honolulu Apartment in 1972. A DNA Sleuth Recently Cracked the Case

11/27/2024 11:45 AM

Nancy Anderson's mysterious murder is the focus of the Dec. 2 episode of 'People Magazine Investigates,' at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery, which streams on Max

Strolling the warm sands of Honolulu's Waikiki Beach quickly became part of 19-year-old Nancy Anderson's routine when she moved by herself from Colorado to Hawaii in the fall of 1971.

A recent high school graduate, Anderson thought moving to a new place would help her figure out what she wanted to do with her life. "She was trying to find herself," says Mary Schiattone, one of Nancy's nine siblings. "She knew Hawaii is beautiful and if you're going to go anywhere, why not Hawaii?"

On Oct. 21, 1971, Nancy jetted off to the lush island of Oahu, stepping off the plane and into her new life with a suitcase and money she'd saved from a job as a waitress and by working at a donut shop.

In Honolulu, Nancy found an apartment on Aloha Drive to share with a roommate, got a job at McDonald's and made lots of new friends. "Nancy, like the rest of our family, was raised to be trusting and kind," says Mary. "But that could also lead to being naive because we didn't understand there could be real evil in the world."

Less than three months after moving to Waikiki, the effervescent young woman with so many hopes for the future came face-to-face with unspeakable evil. On the afternoon of Jan. 7, 1972, her roommate, Jody Spooner, 18, woke up from an afternoon nap to the sound of running water in Nancy's bathroom. When she entered her roommate's bedroom, she found Anderson dead on the floor. 

Initially, Spooner thought it was suicide. But police who arrived on the scene immediately suspected murder: Anderson had been savagely stabbed 63 times and died from a knife wound to the heart. "It was unimaginable," says her brother Jack Anderson. "A beautiful 19-year-old girl with her whole life in front of her. Why? Who would do such a thing?" 

That very question haunted Nancy's family and police in Hawaii for more than 50 years, eventually making Anderson's unsolved murder the  state's oldest cold case. Now, the mysterious slaying is featured in "The Aloha Murder," the next episode of People Magazine Investigates, airing on Investigation Discovery on Monday, Dec. 2, at 9/8c and streaming on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

The episode goes behind the scenes of the search and capture of Nancy's killer, a case that was re-opened in 2019 when the victim's brother, Jack Anderson, reached out to renowned forensic genealogist CeCe Moore of Parabon NanoLabs in Virginia, for help. 

Related: Hawaii 19-Year-Old Was Found Slain in Home 50 Years Ago — and Suspect Was Just Charged After Son Provided DNA

Using state-of-the-art DNA analysis, combined with traditional detective work, Moore and Honolulu police identified a long-ago Honolulu neighbor of Anderson's, Tudor Chirila, then 77, as a suspect. He was arrested in 2021 and, the following year, tried and convicted of  Anderson's second-degree murder. "It was beyond anything we could possibly even dream of after all these years," says Nancy's older sister, Carol Sampson. "This was him. This is who killed our sister."

The Dark Side of Paradise

If anyone had the wherewithal to move to a city 4,000 miles from home without knowing a soul there, it was Nancy. "She would walk into a room and people would gravitate towards her like a magnet. She had more friends than you could count. She was an extrovert."

Outwardly, living in a lush, oceanside oasis seemed to agree with Nancy. "She had a lot of fun with the people she was getting to know," says Carol. But her sisters sensed something darker was going on when, back home for Christmas that year, Nancy told them, "If anything ever happens to me, remember this name," says Mary, who can only recall a two-syllable name of unknown ethnic origin. "It told me Nancy was fearful." 

A week later, on Jan. 8, Nancy's sisters attended a memorial service on the sixth anniversary of their father's death and faced more heartache: When they returned home from church, they were told about Nancy's murder. "I remember the blood-curdling scream mom let out when she heard the news," says Mary.  

Meanwhile, in Hawaii, police launched their investigation, first questioning Nancy's roommate. She said she didn't hear the attack in the bedroom next door because of the water that was left running in Nancy's bathroom. 

Detectives then located two young cutlery salesmen who made a sales call at the apartment earlier that day and contacted a man with whom Nancy had been on several dates. Everyone had alibis.

With no further leads to pursue, police eventually moved on to other cases, and Nancy's case went cold. But Nancy's siblings never stopped longing for justice. In 2001, their mother Thelma passed away at 75. "She deserved a peaceful death — an answer as to who killed Nancy," says Jack. 

That year, Sampson successfully petitioned the Honolulu police chief to reopen the case. Nearly two decades later, after discussing a promising new investigative technique called genetic genealogy at a family reunion, Jack searched online for genetic genealogists and learned about CeCe Moore, a pioneering DNA sleuth who, at that time, had helped to solve dozens of cases. (Today she and her team have helped solve more than 300 rape and murder cold cases.)

Related: How Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore Solved 109 Criminal Cases with DNA: 'It's About Families'

When Jack sought her help, Moore immediately agreed to take on Nancy's cold case. "It's not typical that a family reaches out to me," says Moore. "It definitely made me very emotionally invested." 

Moore got to work using DNA left behind at the crime scene. The killer had apparently cut himself during the violent knifing and left behind blood stains on a towel. Moore compared a DNA profile provided by police with profiles in genealogy databases and then compiled a family tree of people who shared DNA with the likely suspect.

She narrowed her search to an individual who lived near Nancy in the early 1970s — Chirila, a university teaching assistant living in Waikiki. Furthermore, Moore discovered through a records search that Chirila had gone on to have troubles with the law. "He had once been arrested for kidnapping his girlfriend who was trying to break up with him," she says. (The charges were later dropped.)

Honolulu police tracked Chirila down in Reno, Nev., where he once served as a state deputy attorney general. Police, armed with a search warrant, gathered a DNA sample from him at his apartment, which gave them the evidence they needed. "After 50 years, we finally had a match," says Moore.

Chirila was charged with Nancy Anderson's murder and extradited to Hawaii to stand trial. But on Dec. 25, 2023 — Christmas Day — Chirila died in a hospital after refusing to eat, drink or take medications for two days.

Though Chirila was never convicted, Nancy's siblings see his death in custody as vindication. "If we do nothing else in our lives," says Carol, "I think I can say, 'Nancy, we did this for you. There's been justice for you.'"

People Magazine Investigates: The Aloha Murder airs on ID on Dec. 2 at 9/8c and streams on Max.