People Magazine Investigates Recap for The Aloha Murder
This week’s People Magazine Investigates is titled The Aloha Murder and profiles the murder of Nancy Anderson. Her brother Jack and sister Mary recall her as someone with the biggest smile and dynamic. Her sister Carol recalls being full of joy, spirit and happiness.
-The siblings remember her loving The Wizard of Oz and always making them act it out, with her being Dorothy.
-The siblings lost their dad due to a work accident when Nancy was thirteen. She was sad, but made sure her family was doing okay.
-Nancy would move to Hawaii after high school, looking for what her siblings called her ‘somewhere over the rainbow.’ She worked at a McDonald’s and looked for a roommate to help pay the bills.
-That Christmas, she came home for Christmas with a special photo she’d made with all the members of the family.
-Nancy didn’t want to go back to Hawaii, but Carol convinced her to go home.
-On January 7th, 1972, Nancy was back in Hawaii. Back home, the family was in the living room hanging out when their mom got the sense that something was very wrong. Her picture also crashed from the wall, freaking everyone out. At that very time in Hawaii, Nancy’s roommate Jody Spooner found Nancy unresponsive in their apartment. She called the police, initially thinking it was suicide.
-Detectives arrived and upon investigation deemed her death a homicide. There was a ton of blood at the scene and puncture wounds on Nancy’s body. Bloody towels and sheets were also found, but the knife was missing. There was also evidence that the killer might have cut themselves, due to another towel and more blood being found at the stairwell.
-The Andersons find out about the murder and are shocked and upset about what happened to Nancy, having no idea why this could have happened.
-The Andersons initially suspected Jody who they didn’t know well. According to police, Jody described Nancy as nice, but naïve. She had claimed that she had gone shopping the day of the murder and came home to Nancy talking to cutlery salesmen. She had chatted with Nancy went to take a nap. She would then wake up to water running, but nothing else. An experiment done by the cops proved this could have been valid.
-The salesmen were both questioned about what happened. They corroborated the timeline Jody gave and were eliminated as suspects, as was Jody.
-Since Nancy had lots of friends and there was no forced entry, it was possible she’d let her killer into her home. However, authorities didn’t know where to begin looking for suspects.
-Nancy’s mom had gotten a call from a guy named Mike who claimed to be Nancy’s boyfriend and that he knew what happened to her, bringing the investigation into a whole new direction. The family had no idea who Mike was and claimed that Nancy never mentioned a boyfriend.
-It turns out that there was a Mike who was part of Nancy’s life, but an alibi cleared him as a suspect.
-More suspects were questioned, but everything led to dead ends. Despite this, the Andersons were determined to keep Nancy’s memory alive and bring the killer to justice. Sadly, Nancy’s mom would die in July 2001 before Nancy’s killer would be caught.
-The case was reopened shortly after Nancy’s mom’s death. The blood on the towels belonged to an unknown male, leading to every male suspect being questioned and having their DNA tested. None of them were a match.
-Authorities would use CODIS, a national database of the DNA of convicted felons. Once again, no match was found.
-In 2003, the case went back to pending status, but the family refused to give up hope.
-Jack and his wife discovered a new way to find a DNA match, thanks to a TV show they were watching where adopted people would use DNA tests to find their birth families. This is now known as genetic geneology.
-Jack got in touch with CeCe Moore, who is an expert in this field. She would take on the case and test the DNA in hopes of finding a match. The test was able to determine the male in question had dark hair, fair skin and hazel eyes. This was able to narrow down suspects. Further investigation was able to determine the man was Romanian and Italian, narrowing down the suspects even more and giving them a hit on a man named Tudor Chirila.
-Tudor and his wife lived a few miles from Nancy at the time of her death. He was working as a teaching assistant at the time of her death and then moved to Nevada to pursue a law degree and career. Despite being an upstanding citizen on the outside, he had a criminal record that included kidnapping and mob activity.
-Tudor was considered a person of interest in the case, but they needed to find a connection. In 2o22, CeCe and her team worked with the Reno PD to try and get a discarded piece of DNA. When that didn’t work, they reached out to Tudor’s kids to get their DNA to see if there was a match. His son John agreed to help.
-The DNA is a match and helps lead to getting Tudor’s own DNA. Knowing the police were closing in on him, Tudor would transfer the title of his car to a neighbor and attempt suicide.
-Tudor was finally arrested, much to the joy of Nancy’s family. However, he would die on Christmas Day in 2023 before his trial began.
-While the family was happy to have caught the killer, they were disappointed that Tudor never paid for his crimes.
-CeCe and the Andersons started an affordable DNA database to help other families get answers in their own unsolved cases.
-Jack wrote a book called the Brittle Riddle based on Nancy’s case. All proceeds will go to support DNA Justice, the database CeCe and the Andersons created.
