A reminder for would-be (and former) killers: Forensic technology gets better and better every year, and investigators are increasingly tracking down murderers who have evaded capture for decades:
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.
Momohara's body was found here nearly half a century ago:
For decades there was no prime suspect in the case, until this month when officers arrested Momohara's former classmate Gideon Castro at a Utah nursing home.
Incredibly, Castro was interviewed in the days after the murder, but was apparently never implicated in the crime, though a sketch of the alleged killer was circulated at the time:
As ever, advances in technology helped nab the suspected killer:
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.
Authorities say Momohara "received a call from an unknown man the morning before her slaying," and later "informed her mother that she would be visiting a shopping center with some friends," the last time her mother saw her alive.
Thank God for better forensics and good police work.
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