A Cold Case Solved: Justice for Dawn After 46 Years
After 46 years, DNA evidence finally reveals who killed a teenage girl found murdered in her Hawaii high school.
In March 1977, something terrible happened at McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. A school teacher discovered 16-year-old Dawn Momohara, a sophomore student, dead inside the English building of the school. The entire community was frightened and stunned, but police were unable to identify the perpetrator. The case remained a mystery for nearly 50 years — until now.
The previous day Dawn Nicole Palmer had told her mother that she was going to hang out with friends at the mall. Someone had called her on the phone, but nobody knew who it was. Her family reported her missing when she didn’t return home that night.
Witnesses told police they noticed a strange vehicle at the school parking lot that night. Despite police stopping numerous vehicles matching the witness descriptions, they were unable to locate the perpetrator.
But something happened in 2019. Dawn’s case was one the police had saved evidence from, including DNA from her clothes. Now, due to new technology that aids in analyzing DNA, they could finally search for matches.
Detectives tracked down two brothers who were “potentially involved in the case” — William and Gideon Castro. Both attended McKinley High School in the 1970s. One of the brothers, Gideon, had even met Dawn at a school dance a year before she was killed.
Investigators secured DNA from the Castro brothers’ adult children to compare to the samples.  This led them to determine that Gideon Castro’s DNA was a match with what they had from Dawn’s case. Police located Gideon, now 66, living in a nursing home in Utah. They took him into custody and charged him with murder.
Lieutenant Deena Thoemmes with the Honolulu Police Department thanked those who assisted in the case. “We never stopped working to get justice for Dawn and her family,” she said.
It’s encouraging to see how new science can help solve old mysteries and bring closure to families who have waited for many years for answers, and to bring criminals to justice who thought previously that they had literally gotten away with murder.
(Story source: All That’s Interesting | Cover photo: Newspapers.com)
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