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RENO, Nev. – A man who formerly held the position of Nevada deputy attorney general was taken into custody this week in Reno and charged with murdering a woman five decades ago in Hawaii.
Tudor Chirila Jr. is accused of second-degree murder. Honolulu police said DNA evidence linked him to the fatal stabbing of Nancy Elaine Anderson who was 19-year-old when she was brutally murdered in 1972, according to the criminal complaint.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser first reported that Chirila, 77, was arrested Wednesday. He was being held Thursday in the Washoe County Jail without bail on a charge of being a fugitive from another state.
Investigators say he stabbed the young woman more than 60 times and left her body in her Waikiki apartment on Jan. 7, 1972, reported KOLO 8. Anderson’s bloodied body was discovered by her roommate. She died of a fatal stab wound through the heart.
Nancy Elaine Anderson was found dead in her Hawaii apartment in 1972. (Honolulu Police Department)
In October 1971, Anderson moved to Hawaii and was employed at a McDonald’s restaurant after graduating from high school the year before in Bay City, Michigan, according to the Star-Advertiser.
Police in Hawaii received a tip in December 2021 that Chirila could have been involved in the murder. Upon receiving the information, they began to research his background in the Aloha State.
They found two police reports. One involved Chirila reporting a stolen car in 1971. The other involved Chirila reporting that items from inside that car were missing when it was recovered. In those reports, Chirila listed his place of birth as Honolulu. He identified himself as a graduate assistant at the University of Hawaii, the Reno Gazett-Journal reported.
Investigators tried to obtain a surreptitious sample of Chirila’s DNA, but were unsuccessful.
The major break in the 50-year-old cold case came in March 2022 when police obtained voluntary DNA from Chirila’s son who lives in Newport Beach, California. It identified him as the biological offspring of a person whose DNA was discovered in Anderson’s apartment, according to a criminal complaint.
After the March revelation, investigators in Reno secured a search warrant and obtained DNA from Chirila earlier this month. Two days later, Chirila tried to commit suicide, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. In a booking mug shot, he appeared to be in a hospital gown with bandages on his neck.
Chirila served as Nevada’s deputy attorney general in the late 1970s and lost a bid to be a Nevada Supreme Court justice in 1994, the Washington Examiner reported.
Chirila had a previous encounter with authorities in Nevada in 1998 when he was accused in a federal indictment of being the former president of a company that served as a front for a Nevada brothel, Mustang Ranch.
Details regarding his extradition to Hawaii were not immediately clear.
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Source: www.lawofficer.com