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  • February 18, 2025
Cause of death identified for lawyer who killed Waikiki woman 52 years ago

Cause of death identified for lawyer who killed Waikiki woman 52 years ago

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The medical examiner’s report for Tudor Chirila reveals that sepsis caused the death of the 78-year-old cold case murder suspect last Christmas at the Oahu Community Correctional Center.

Chirila was awaiting trial for the murder of Nancy Anderson in her Waikiki apartment in January 1972.

It took fifty years before anyone was arrested.

Genetic genealogy DNA solved the mystery and solved one of Hawaii’s oldest cold cases.

Anderson’s family spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii to remember her and thanked Honolulu police officials for continuing to work the case and for allowing genetic genealogy DNA to be attempted in 2021.

Anderson was 19 years old when she moved to Hawaii and started working at the Ala Moana Center. Her roommate found her dead, stabbed 63 times.

The killer left behind a bloody towel, but DNA testing never turned up a match on the usual law enforcement websites.

That’s because Chirila never committed a crime after the murder. He moved to Nevada and worked his way up to deputy attorney general.

Anderson’s brother Jack was 12 years old when his sister was murdered. He said it was difficult for her nine siblings and their mother.

“We were all very close. We lost our father when I was seven years old, so I watched my mother raise her 10 children alone,” Jack Anderson said.

In 2019, he discovered that genetic genealogy DNA was used to solve crimes, including the Golden State murders in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Then we thought, oh OK, we have hope,” he said.

Anderson said he contacted famed genetic genealogist Cece Moore in California. She worked with HPD to extract DNA from the bloody towel.

That DNA sample was uploaded to a public genetic database that identified distant relatives. Moore then constructed a family tree, narrowing down the suspect by age, gender, other physical characteristics, and location: Who lived in Hawaii in 1972?

She straightened up Tudor Chirilathen a graduate assistant at the University of Hawaii.

It was Chirila’s adult son who willingly provided DNA to authorities, leading to Chirila’s arrest in 2022.

Chirila was extradited and sent to the Oahu Community Correctional Center pending the murder trial.

On Christmas Day 2023, Chirila went to the prison infirmarythen to Queens Medical Center, where he died.

The autopsy report found that sepsis caused by a urinary tract infection was the cause of his death, but there were other contributing factors: tongue cancer, diabetes, heart disease and kidney stones.

“Poetic justice,” Anderson said. “He spent the last year and a half of his life behind bars here, so I was at peace with that.”

Anderson recently wrote a book about his sister’s murder and the long wait for answers, called The Brittle Riddle, which is available in bookstores and on the Internet. Amazon.

Anderson said he doesn’t make any money from the sales. Rather, the entire proceeds go to DNAjustice.orga nonprofit organization that helps law enforcement agencies cover expensive DNA testing.