Utah judge orders release of suspect in 1977 Hawaii killing after prosecution stalls

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah judge ordered the release of a 66-year-old suspect in the 1977 killing of a Hawaii teenager after prosecutors in Honolulu said they weren’t ready to proceed with a murder charge against him.

Gideon Castro was arrested in January at a Utah nursing home on a fugitive warrant for suspicion of second-degree murder in the death of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara. He had waived the right to challenge his extradition during a hearing in Salt Lake City last month. Castro, who is ill, appeared by video from a jail hospital bed.

While he was still awaiting extradition, Honolulu prosecutors told their counterparts in Utah this week that they were not proceeding with the case against Castro because of “recent complications involving a material witness in this case and the state of the evidence.”

“Please understand we view this as only a temporary setback, and we remain fully committed to continuing our efforts to prosecute this matter in the near future,” Kelsi Guerra, a deputy prosecuting attorney in Honolulu wrote in a Monday letter to Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Clifford Ross.

Utah District Court Judge John Nielsen ordered Castro’s release Wednesday. Salt Lake County jail records no longer listed him as an inmate Thursday.

On March 21, 1977, shortly after 7:30 a.m., Honolulu police found the body of Momohara on the second floor of a building at McKinley High School. She was lying on her back, partially clothed with an orange cloth wrapped tightly around her neck and had been sexually assaulted and strangled, police said.

Castro was a student at the Honolulu school.

An attorney for Castro had said during a hearing last month in Salt Lake City that he intended to fight the charges upon his return to Hawaii, where is still a resident, according to jail records. It is unclear how long Castro had been in Utah when he was arrested at the nursing home in Millcreek, just south of Salt Lake City.

After Momohara’s death, police released sketches of a person of interest and a possible vehicle described by witnesses as a 1974 or 1975 Pontiac LeMans. But they were unable to identify a suspect, and the case grew cold.

Police used advances in DNA technology to connect Castro to the killing. They had interviewed Castro and his brother in 1977, but they were unable to conclusively link Castro to the killing until obtaining DNA samples in recent years.