Salt Lake City-a 66-year-old suspect in the 1977 murder of a Hawaii teenager was released from a Utah prison on Thursday after prosecutors in Honolulu said they were not ready to proceed with a murder position against him.
Gideon Castro was arrested in January in an Utah nursing home with a fugitive order for suspicion of second degree murder for the death of Dawn Momohara, 16. He had resigned the right to challenge his extradition during an audience at Salt Lake City last month. Castro, who is sick, appeared by video from a hospital bed.
While Castro was still waiting for extradition, Honolulu prosecutors told his counterparts in Utah this week that they were not proceeding against him due to “recent complications involving a material testimony in this case and the state of evidence.”
“Please, we understand that we see this as only a temporary setback, and we continue to continue our efforts to prosecute this issue in the near future,” wrote Kelsi Guerra, an attached prosecutor in Honolulu, wrote in a letter from Monday to the deputy fiscal attitude of the District of Salt Lake, Clifford Ross.
The judge of the Utah district court, John Nielsen, ordered Castro’s release on Wednesday afternoon. He was released on Thursday, said Chris Bronson, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office of Salt Lake County.
On March 21, 1977, shortly after 7:30 am, the Honolulu Police found Momohara’s body on the second floor of a building in McKinley High School. She was lying on her back, partially dressed in an orange cloth wrapped around her neck and had been sexually attacked and strangled, the police said.
Castro graduated from Honolulu school in 1976.
A Castro lawyer had said during a hearing last month at Salt Lake City who intended to fight the charges on his return to Hawaii, where he is still a resident, according to prison records. It is not clear how long Castro had been in Utah when he was arrested in the elderly in Millcreek, just south of Salt Lake City.
A McKinley High School graduate who was the school’s band teacher at the time of Momohara’s death said he was disappointed to find out the launch of Castro.
“I guess they have to make sure they have a solid case like a rock,” Grant Okamura said.
“In a sense, I am disappointed that at least they could not go to trial, but I can understand their nervousness that they do not simply want to random into something and get it out.”
The authorities in Hawaii said Thursday that they continued with their investigation into the murder of Momohara. No more information was published at this time, said Honolulu Police spokeswoman Michelle Yu.
After Momohara’s death, the police released sketches from a person of interest and a possible vehicle described by witnesses as a 1974 or 1975 Pontiac Lemans. But they could not identify a suspect, and the case cooled.
Police used Advances in DNA technology to connect Castro to the murder. They had interviewed Castro and his brother in 1977, but they could not conclude Castro with the murder until obtaining DNA samples in recent years.
