A former deputy attorney general of Nevada who campaigned for the state Supreme Court and subsequently had ties to the notorious Mustang Ranch brothel has been arrested in Reno as a suspect in a 1972 murder in Hawaii. On Thursday, 77-year-old Tudor Chirila Jr. was being detained without bond at the Washoe County Jail on a charge of fleeing from another state.
In a criminal complaint charging Chirila of second-degree murder, Honolulu police said that DNA evidence tied him to the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Nancy Anderson.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser was the first to disclose Chirila’s arrest on Wednesday, fifty years after police allege he stabbed the adolescent more than sixty times and left her dead in her Waikiki apartment on January 7, 1972. The newspaper said that Anderson had come to Hawaii in October 1971 and was working at a McDonald’s restaurant after graduating from high school in Bay City, Michigan the previous year.
It was unclear if Chirila had a lawyer or would be assigned one. There is no indication in his jail record of when he is expected to make his first court appearance.
The criminal complaint filed this week in Hawaii district court said that police have revisited the cold case many times since the murder and obtained information in December that Chirila may be a suspect.
It was unclear if Chirila had a lawyer or would be assigned one. There is no indication in his jail record of when he is expected to make his first court appearance.
The criminal complaint filed this week in Hawaii district court said that police have revisited the cold case many times since the murder and obtained information in December that Chirila may be a suspect.
On September 6, Reno police served a search warrant at Tudor Chirila’s residence and obtained a DNA sample. Two days later, he attempted suicide and was placed into the county prison in Reno on Wednesday, the Reno Gazette-Journal said on Thursday.
The Honolulu Police Department earlier said that it has hired a DNA technology firm to help in the investigation.
According to Parabon Nanolabs, genetic genealogy and DNA phenotyping were employed to analyse the data. DNA phenotyping is the practise of determining physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.
The newspaper said that throughout the years, police in Hawaii examined several suspects, including door-to-door knife salesman who attempted to sell blades hours beforehand. However, the salesman voluntarily provided fingerprints and passed polygraph exams.
Other possible suspects interrogated throughout the years included Anderson’s ex-boyfriends and her landlord.
Hawaii News Now stated that Anderson’s family, including her nine siblings, had spent years yearning for closure.
“She was an integral part of our family and when she was killed it just left a hole in our hearts and in our family,” said Nancy’s brother, Jack Anderson.
Longtime Reno, Carson City, and Lake Tahoe attorney Chirila served as deputy attorney general in the late 1970s and unsuccessfully sought for the Nevada Supreme Court in 1994.
In a 1998 federal indictment, U.S. prosecutors in Reno named him as the former president of A.G.E. Corp., the front firm for Joe Conforte, the Nevada brothel lord.
The indictment charged Conforte and others of participating in an extensive scheme to cheat the government in bankruptcy proceedings when the Mustang Ranch east of Reno was seized by the Internal Revenue Service, sold for unpaid taxes in 1990, and fraudulently repurchased by Conforte and his associates.