SALT LAKE CITY — Honolulu Police and the Unified Police of the Greater Salt Lake say they have arrested a 66-year-old man in a Utah nursing home in connection to a Hawaii murder nearly 50 years ago.
Gideon Belamidi Castro was arrested Monday and is now awaiting extradition to Hawaii.
According to police, on the morning of March 21, 1977, they were called to the English building of McKinley High School where they discovered the body of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara on the second floor.
Investigators say Momohara, a sophomore at the school, was found partially clothed and appeared to have been sexually assaulted, which was later confirmed in an autopsy, and had an orange cloth around her neck.
Momohara's mother told detectives that she last heard from her daughter when she announced she was going to a shopping center.
A friend of Momohara's reported that he and his girlfriend had seen a car near the school building and getting into the car. The witness circled back around for a closer look but the car and the man inside were gone.
One week later, investigators talked to two brothers, William and Gideon Castro, with one saying they had Momohara at a school dance in 1976. William Castro told police that he had last seen Momohara three days before her murder when she walked past his home. He explained to investigators that he had offered her a ride to campus but she declined.
It wasn't until March 2019 when a cold case detective submitted a request to the Honolulu Police Department's forensic biology unit to process several items of evidence recovered from the scene. Those items included blue shorts and underwear that belonged to Momohara.
In May 2020, a DNA criminalist obtained the partial major DNA profile of an unidentified man from material found on Momohara's shorts. Three years later, investigators received information that William Castro or Gideon Castro could be potential suspects in the case.
Investigators had one of William's adult children submit DNA for testing in November 2023, with detectives using the sample to rule out William Castro as a suspect.
Detectives went to one of Gideon's children for a DNA sample to test and FBI investigators confirmed that his son was the biological child of the man who left DNA at the scene of Momohara's murder.
On Monday, officers with the Millcreek Investigations Unit of the Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake arrested Gideon at a local nursing home and he now faces murder charges in the death of Momohara.
